JEFF BRIGG’S LOVE

STORY & TALES

BY

BRET HARTE

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Chapter 1

It was raining and blowing at Eldridge’s Crossing.

From the stately pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were

dignifiedly protesting through their rigid spines upward, to

the hysterical willows in the hollow, that had whipped

themselves into a maudlin fury, there was a general tumult.

When the wind lulled, the rain kept up the distraction, firing

long volleys across the road, letting loose miniature cataracts

from the hill-sides to brawl in the ditches, and beating down

the heavy heads of wild oats on the levels; when the rain

ceased for a moment the wind charged over the already

defeated field, ruffled the gullies, scattered the spray from

the roadside pines, and added insult to injury. But both wind

and rain concentrated their energies in a malevolent attempt

to utterly disperse and scatter the “Half-way House,” which

seemed to have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the

open, where, dazed and bewildered, unprepared and

unprotected, it was exposed to the taunting fury of the blast.

A loose, shambling, disjointed, hastily built

structure―representing the worst features of Pioneer

renaissance―it rattled its loose window-sashes like

chattering teeth, banged its ill-hung shutters, and admitted so

much of the invading storm, that it might have blown up or

blown down with equal facility.

Jefferson Briggs, proprietor and landlord of the

“Half-way House,” had just gone through the formality of

closing his house for the night, hanging dangerously out of

the window in the vain attempt to subdue a rebellious shutter

that had evidently entered into conspiracy with the invaders,

and, shutting a door as against a sheriff’s posse, was going

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to bed―i. e., to read himself asleep, as was his custom. As

he entered his little bedroom in the attic with a highly

exciting novel in his pocket and a kerosene lamp in his hand,

the wind, lying in wait for him, instantly extinguished his

lamp and slammed the door behind him. Jefferson Briggs

relighted the lamp, as if confidentially, in a corner, and,

shielding it in the bosom of his red flannel shirt, which gave

him the appearance of an illuminated shrine, hung a heavy

bear-skin across the window, and then carefully deposited

his lamp upon a chair at his bedside. This done, he kicked

off his boots, flung them into a corner, and, rolling himself

in a blanket, lay down upon the bed. A habit of early rising,

bringing with it, presumably, the proverbial accompaniment

of health, wisdom, and pecuniary emoluments, had also

brought with it certain ideas of the effeminacy of separate

toilettes and the virtue of readiness.

In a few moments he was deep in a chapter.

A vague pecking at his door―as of an unseasonable

woodpecker, finally asserted itself to his consciousness.

“Come in,” he said, with his eye still on the page.

The door opened to a gaunt figure, partly composed

of bed-quilt and partly of plaid shawl. A predominance of

the latter and a long wisp of iron-gray hair determined her

sex. She leaned against the post with an air of fatigue, half

moral and half physical.

“How ye kin lie thar, abed, Jeff, and read and smoke

on sich a night! The sperrit o’ the Lord abroad over the

yearth―and up stage not gone by yet. Well, well! it’s well

thar ez SOME EZ CAN’T SLEEP.”

“The up coach, like as not, is stopped by high water

on the North Fork, ten miles away, aunty,” responded Jeff,

5

keeping to the facts. Possibly not recognizing the hand of the

beneficent Creator in the rebellious window shutter, he

avoided theology.

“Well,” responded the figure, with an air of

delivering an unheeded and thankless warning, “it is not for

ME to say. P’raps it’s all His wisdom that some will keep to

their own mind. It’s well ez some hezn’t narves, and kin

luxuriate in terbacker in the night watches. But He says, ‘I’ll

come like a thief in the night!’―like a thief in the night,

Jeff.”

Totally unable to reconcile this illustration with the

delayed “Pioneer” coach and Yuba Bill, its driver, Jeff lay

silent. In his own way, perhaps, he was uneasy―not to say

shocked―at his aunt’s habitual freedom of scriptural

quotation, as that good lady herself was with an occasional

oath from his lips; a fact, by the way, not generally

understood by purveyors of Scripture, licensed and

unlicensed.

“I’d take a pull at them bitters, aunty,” said Jeff

feebly, with his wandering eye still recurring to his page.

“They’ll do ye a power of good in the way o’ calmin’ yer

narves.”

“Ef I was like some folks I wouldn’t want

bitters―though made outer the simplest yarbs of the yearth,

with jest enough sperrit to bring out the vartoos―ez Deacon

Stoer’s Balm ‘er Gilead is―what yer meaning? Ef I was like

some folks I could lie thar and smoke in the lap o’

idleness―with fourteen beds in the house empty, and nary

lodger for one of ‘em. Ef I was that indifferent to havin’

invested my fortin in the good will o’ this house, and not ez

much ez a single transient lookin’ in, I could lie down and

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take comfort in profane literatoor. But it ain’t in me to do it.

And it wasn’t your father’s way, Jeff, neither!”

As the elder Briggs’ way had been to seek surcease

from such trouble at the gambling table, and eventually, in

suicide, Jeff could not deny it. But he did not say that a full

realization of his unhappy venture overcame him as he

closed the blinds of the hotel that night; and that the half

desperate idea of abandoning it then and there to the warring

elements that had resented his trespass on Nature seemed to

him an act of simple reason and justice. He did not say this,

for easy-going natures are not apt to explain the processes by

which their content or resignation is reached, and are

therefore supposed to have none. Keeping to the facts, he

simply suggested the weather was unfavorable to travelers,

and again found his place on the page before him. Fixing it

with his thumb, he looked up resignedly. The figure wearily

detached itself from the door-post, and Jeff’s eyes fell on his

book. “You won’t stop, aunty?” he asked mechanically, as if

reading aloud from the page; but she was gone.

A little ashamed, although much relieved, Jeff fell

back again to literature, interrupted only by the charging of

the wind and the heavy volleys of rain. Presently he found

himself wondering if a certain banging were really a shutter,

and then, having settled in his mind that it WAS, he was

startled by a shout. Another, and in the road before the

house!

Jeff put down the book, and marked the place by

turning down the leaf, being one of that large class of readers

whose mental faculties are butter-fingered, and easily slip

their hold. Then he resumed his boots and was duly

caparisoned. He extinguished the kerosene lamp, and braved

the outer air, and strong currents of the hall and stairway in

the darkness. Lighting two candles in the bar-room, he

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proceeded to unlock the hall door. At the same instant a

furious blast shook the house, the door yielded slightly and

impelled a thin, meek-looking stranger violently against Jeff,

who still struggled with it.

“An accident has occurred,” began the stranger,

“and”―but here the wind charged again, blew open the

door, pinned Jeff behind it back against the wall, overturned

the dripping stranger, dashed up the staircase, and slammed

every door in the house, ending triumphantly with Number

14, and a crash of glass in the window.

“‘Come, rouse up!” said Jeff, still struggling with the

door, “rouse up and lend a hand yer!”

Thus abjured, the stranger crept along the wall

towards Jeff and began again, “We have met with an

accident.” But here another and mightier gust left him

speechless, covered him with spray of a wildly disorganized

water-spout that, dangling from the roof, seemed to be

playing on the front door, drove him into black obscurity and

again sandwiched his host between the door and the wall.

Then there was a lull, and in the midst of it Yuba Bill, driver

of the “Pioneer” coach, quietly and coolly, impervious in

waterproof, walked into the hall, entered the bar-room, took

a candle, and, going behind the bar, selected a bottle,

critically examined it, and, returning, poured out a quantity

of whiskey in a glass and gulped it in a single draught.

All this while Jeff was closing the door, and the

meek-looking man was coming into the light again.

Yuba Bill squared his elbows behind him and rested

them on the bar, crossed his legs easily and awaited them. In

reply to Jeff’s inquiring but respectful look, he said shortly―

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“Oh, you’re thar, are ye?”

“Yes, Bill.”

“Well, this yer new-fangled road o’ yours is ten feet

deep in the hollow with back water from the North Fork! I’ve

taken that yar coach inter fower feet of it, and then I reckoned

I couldn’t hev any more. ‘I’ll stand on this yer hand,’ sez I;

I brought the horses up yer and landed ‘em in your barn to

eat their blessed heads off till the water goes down. That’s

wot’s the matter, old man, and jist about wot I kalkilated on

from those durned old improvements o’ yours.”

Coloring a little at this new count in the general

indictment against the uselessness of the “Half-way House,”

Jeff asked if there were “any passengers?”

Yuba Bill indicated the meek stranger with a jerk of

his thumb. “And his wife and darter in the coach. They’re all

right and tight, ez if they was in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But

I reckon he allows to fetch ‘em up yer,” added Bill, as if he

strongly doubted the wisdom of the transfer.

The meek man, much meeker for the presence of

Bill, here suggested that such indeed was his wish, and

further prayed that Jeff would accompany him to the coach

to assist in bringing them up. “It’s rather wet and dark,” said

the man apologetically; “my daughter is not strong. Have

you such a thing as a waterproof?”

Jeff had not; but would a bear-skin do?

It would.

Jeff ran, tore down his extempore window curtain,

and returned with it. Yuba Bill, who had quietly and

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disapprovingly surveyed the proceeding, here disengaged

himself from the bar with evident reluctance.

“You’ll want another man,” he said to Jeff, “onless

ye can carry double. Ez HE,” indicating the stranger, “ez no

sort o’ use, he’d better stay here and ‘tend bar,’ while you

and me fetch the wimmen off. ‘Specially ez I reckon we’ve

got to do some tall wadin’ by this time to reach ‘em.”

The meek man sat down helplessly in a chair

indicated by Bill, who at once strode after Jeff. In another

moment they were both fighting their way, step by step,

against the storm, in that peculiar, drunken, spasmodic way

so amusing to the spectator and so exasperating to the

performer. It was no time for conversation, even

interjectional profanity was dangerously exhaustive.

The coach was scarcely a thousand yards away, but

its bright lights were reflected in a sheet of dark silent water

that stretched between it and the two men. Wading and

splashing, they soon reached it, and a gully where the surplus

water was pouring into the valley below. “Fower feet o’

water round her, but can’t get any higher. So ye see she’s all

right for a month o’ sich weather.” Inwardly admiring the

perspicacity of his companion, Jeff was about to open the

coach door when Bill interrupted.

“I’ll pack the old woman, if you’ll look arter the

darter and enny little traps.”

A female face, anxious and elderly, here appeared at

the window.

“Thet’s my little game,” said Bill, sotto voce.

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“Is there any danger? where is my husband?” asked

the woman impatiently.

“Ez to the danger, ma’am―thar ain’t any. Yer ez

safe HERE ez ye’d be in a Sacramento steamer; ez to your

husband, he allowed I was to come yer and fetch yer up to

the hotel. That’s his look-out!” With this cheering speech,

Bill proceeded to make two or three ineffectual scoops into

the dark interior, manifestly with the idea of scooping out the

lady in question. In another instant he had caught her, lifted

her gently but firmly in his arms, and was turning away.

“But my child!―my daughter! she’s

asleep!”―expostulated the woman; but Bill was already

swiftly splashing through the darkness. Jeff, left to himself,

hastily examined the coach: on the back seat a slight small

figure, enveloped in a shawl, lay motionless. Jeff threw the

bear-skin over it gently, lifted it on one arm, and gathering a

few travelling bags and baskets with the other, prepared to

follow his quickly disappearing leader. A few feet from the

coach the water appeared to deepen, and the bear-skin to

draggle. Jeff drew the figure up higher, in vain.

“Sis,” he said softly.

No reply.

“Sis,” shaking her gently.

There was a slight movement within the wrappings.

“Couldn’t ye climb up on my shoulder, honey? that’s

a good child!”

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There were one or two spasmodic jerks of the bear-

skin, and, aided by Jeff, the bundle was presently seated on

his shoulder.

“Are you all right now, Sis?”

Something like a laugh came from the bear-skin.

Then a childish voice said, “Thank you, I think I am!”

“Ain’t you afraid you’ll fall off?”

“A little.”

Jeff hesitated. It was beginning to blow again.

“You couldn’t reach down and put your arm round

my neck, could ye, honey?”

“I am afraid not!”―although there WAS a slight

attempt to do so.

“No?”

“No!”

“Well, then, take a good holt, a firm strong holt, o’

my hair! Don’t be afraid!”

A small hand timidly began to rummage in Jeff’s

thick curls.

“Take a firm holt; thar, just back o’ my neck! That’s

right.”

The little hand closed over half a dozen curls. The

little figure shook, and giggled.

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“Now don’t you see, honey, if I’m keerless with you,

and don’t keep you plump level up thar, you jist give me a

pull and fetch me up all standing!”

“I see!”

“Of course you do! That’s because you’re a little

lady!”

Jeff strode on. It was pleasant to feel the soft warm

fingers in his hair, pleasant to hear the faint childish voice,

pleasant to draw the feet of the enwrapped figure against his

broad breast. Altogether he was sorry when they reached the

dry land and the lee of the “Half-way House,” where a slight

movement of the figure expressed a wish to dismount.

“Not yet, missy,” said Jeff; “not yet! You’ll get

blown away, sure! And then what’ll they say? No, honey!

I’ll take you right in to your papa, just as ye are!”

A few steps more and Jeff strode into the hall, made

his way to the sitting-room, walked to the sofa, and deposited

his burden. The bear-skin fell back, the shawl fell back, and

Jeff―fell back too! For before him lay a small, slight, but

beautiful and perfectly formed woman.

He had time to see that the meek man, no longer

meek, but apparently a stern uncompromising parent, was

standing at the head of the sofa; that the elderly and nervous

female was hovering at the foot, that his aunt, with every

symptom of religious and moral disapproval of his conduct,

sat rigidly in one of the rigid chairs―he had time to see all

this before the quick, hot blood, flying to his face, sent the

water into his eyes, and he could see nothing!

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The cause of all this smiled―a dazzling smile though

a faint one―that momentarily lit up the austere gloom of the

room and its occupants. “You must thank this gentleman,

papa,” said she, languidly turning to her father, “for his

kindness and his trouble. He has carried me here as gently

and as carefully as if I were a child.” Seeing symptoms of a

return of Jeff’s distress in his coloring face, she added softly,

as if to herself, “It’s a great thing to be strong―a greater

thing to be strong AND gentle.”

The voice thrilled through Jeff. But into this

dangerous human voice twanged the accents of special

spiritual revelation, and called him to himself again, “Be ye

wise as sarpints, but harmless as duvs,” said Jeff’s aunt,

generally, “and let ‘em be thankful ez doesn’t aboos the

stren’th the Lord gives ‘em, but be allers ready to answer for

it at the bar o’ their Maker.” Possibly some suggestion in her

figure of speech reminded her of Jeff’s forgotten duties, so

she added in the same breath and tone, “especially when

transient customers is waiting for their licker, and Yuba Bill

hammerin’ on the counter with his glass; and yer ye stand,

Jeff, never even takin’ up that wet bar-skin―enuff to give

that young woman her death.”

Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed

vaguely to the occupants of the room, but looking toward the

languid goddess on the sofa, Jeff seized the bear-skin and

backed out the door. Then he flew to his room with it, and

then returned to the bar-room; but the impatient William of

Yuba had characteristically helped himself and gone off to

the stable. Then Jeff stole into the hall and halted before the

closed door of the sitting-room. A bold idea of going in

again, as became a landlord of the “Half-way House,” with

an inquiry if they wished anything further, had seized him,

but the remembrance that he had always meekly allowed that

duty to devolve upon his aunt, and that she would probably

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resent it with scriptural authority and bring him to shame

again, stayed his timid knuckles at the door. In this hesitation

he stumbled upon his aunt coming down the stairs with an

armful of blankets and pillows, attended by their small

Indian servant, staggering under a mattress.

“Is everything all right, aunty?”

“Ye kin be thankful to the Lord, Jeff Briggs, that this

didn’t happen last week when I was down on my back with

rheumatiz. But ye’re never grateful.”

“The young lady―is SHE comfortable?” said Jeff,

accepting his aunt’s previous remark as confirmatory.

“Ez well ez enny critter marked by the finger of the

Lord with gallopin’ consumption kin be, I reckon. And she,

ez oughter be putting off airthly vanities, askin’ for a

lookin’-glass! And you! trapesin’ through the hall with her

on yer shoulder, and dancin’ and jouncin’ her up and down

ez if it was a ball-room!” A guilty recollection that he had

skipped with her through the passage struck him with

remorse as his aunt went on: “It’s a mercy that betwixt you

and the wet bar-skin she ain’t got her deth!”

“Don’t ye think, aunty,” stammered Jeff,

“that―that―my bein’ the landlord, yer know, it would be

the square thing―just out o’ respect, ye know―for me to

drop in thar and ask ‘em if thar’s anythin’ they wanted?”

His aunt stopped, and resignedly put down the

pillows. “Sarah,” she said meekly to the handmaiden, “ye kin

leave go that mattress. Yer’s Mr. Jefferson thinks we ain’t

good enough to make the beds for them two city women

folks, and he allows he’ll do it himself!”

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“No, no! aunty!” began the horrified Jeff; but failing

to placate his injured relative, took safety in flight.

Once safe in his own room his eye fell on the bear-

skin. It certainly WAS wet. Perhaps he had been

careless―perhaps he had imperiled her life! His cheeks

flushed as he threw it hastily in the corner. Something fell

from it to the floor. Jeff picked it up and held it to the light.

It was a small, a very small, lady’s slipper. Holding it within

the palm of his hand as if it had been some delicate flower

which the pressure of a finger might crush, he strode to the

door, but stopped. Should he give it to his aunt? Even if she

overlooked this evident proof of HIS carelessness, what

would she think of the young lady’s? Ought he―seductive

thought!―go downstairs again, knock at the door, and give

it to its fair owner, with the apology he was longing to make?

Then he remembered that he had but a few moments before

been dismissed from the room very much as if he were the

original proprietor of the skin he had taken. Perhaps they

were right; perhaps he WAS only a foolish clumsy animal!

Yet SHE had thanked him―and had said in her sweet

childlike voice, “It is a great thing to be strong; a greater

thing to be strong and gentle.” He was strong; strong men

had said so. He did not know if he was gentle too. Had she

meant THAT, when she turned her strangely soft dark eyes

upon him? For some moments he held the slipper

hesitatingly in his hand, then he opened his trunk, and

disposing various articles around it as if it were some fragile,

perishable object, laid it carefully therein.

This done, he drew off his boots, and rolling himself

in his blanket, lay down upon the bed. He did not open his

novel―he did not follow up the exciting love episode of his

favorite hero―so ungrateful is humanity to us poor

romancers, in the first stages of their real passion. Ah, me!

‘tis the jongleurs and troubadours they want then, not us!

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When Master Slender, sick for sweet Anne Page, would

“rather than forty shillings” he had his “book of songs and

sonnets” there, what availed it that the Italian Boccaccio had

contemporaneously discoursed wisely and sweetly of love in

prose? I doubt not that Master Jeff would have mumbled

some verse to himself had he known any: knowing none, he

lay there and listened to the wind.

Did she hear it; did it keep her awake? He had an

uneasy suspicion that the shutter that was banging so

outrageously was the shutter of her room. Filled with this

miserable thought, he arose softly, stole down the staircase,

and listened. The sound was repeated. It was truly the

refractory shutter of Number 7―the best bedroom adjoining

the sitting-room. The next room, Number 8, was vacant. Jeff

entered it softly, as softly opened the window, and leaning

far out in the tempest, essayed to secure the nocturnal

disturber. But in vain. Cord or rope he had none, nor could

he procure either without alarming his aunt―an extremity

not to be considered. Jeff was a man of clumsy but forceful

expedients. He hung far out of the window, and with one

powerful hand lifted the shutter off its hinges and dragged it

softly into Number 8. Then as softly he crept upstairs to bed.

The wind howled and tore round the house; the crazy water-

pipe below Jeff’s window creaked, the chimneys whistled,

but the shutter banged no more. Jeff began to doze. “It’s a

great thing to be strong,” the wind seemed to say as it

charged upon the defenseless house, and then another voice

seemed to reply, “A greater thing to be strong and gentle;”

and hearing this he fell asleep.

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Chapter 2

It was not yet daylight when he awoke with an idea

that brought him hurriedly to his feet. Quickly dressing

himself, he began to count the money in his pocket.

Apparently the total was not satisfactory, as he endeavored

to augment it by loose coins fished from the pockets of his

other garments, and from the corner of his washstand

drawer. Then he cautiously crept downstairs, seized his gun,

and stole out of the still sleeping house. The wind had gone

down, the rain had ceased, a few stars shone steadily in the

north, and the shapeless bulk of the coach, its lamps

extinguished, loomed high and dry above the lessening

water, in the twilight. With a swinging tread Jeff strode up

the hill and was soon upon the highway and stage road. A

half-hour’s brisk walk brought him to the summit, and the

first rosy flashes of morning light. This enabled him to knock

over half-a-dozen early quail, lured by the proverb, who

were seeking their breakfast in the chaparral, and gave him

courage to continue on his mission, which his perplexed face

and irresolute manner had for the last few moments shown

to be an embarrassing one. At last the white fences and

imposing outbuildings of the “Summit Hotel” rose before

him, and he uttered a deep sigh. There, basking in the first

rays of the morning sun, stood his successful rival! Jeff

looked at the well-built, comfortable structure, the

commanding site, and the air of serene independence that

seemed to possess it, and no longer wondered that the great

world passed him by to linger and refresh itself there.

He was relieved to find the landlord was not present

in person, and so confided his business to the bar-keeper. At

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first it appeared that that functionary declined interference,

and with many head-shakings and audible misgivings was

inclined to await the coming of his principal, but a nearer

view of Jeff’s perplexed face, and an examination of Jeff’s

gun, and the few coins spread before him, finally induced

him to produce certain articles, which he packed in a basket

and handed to Jeff, taking the gun and coins in exchange.

Thus relieved, Jeff set his face homewards, and ran a race

with the morning into the valley, reaching the “Half-way

House” as the sun laid waste its bare, bleak outlines, and

relentlessly pointed out its defects one by one. It was cruel

to Jeff at that moment, but he hugged his basket close and

slipped to the back door and the kitchen, where his aunt was

already at work.

“I didn’t know ye were up yet, aunty,” said Jeff

submissively. “It isn’t more than six o’clock.”

“Thar’s four more to feed at breakfast,” said his aunt

severely, “and yer’s the top blown off the kitchen chimbly,

and the fire only just got to go.”

Jeff saw that he was in time. The ordinary breakfast

of the “Half-way House,” not yet prepared, consisted of

codfish, ham, yellow-ochre biscuit, made after a peculiar

receipt of his aunt’s, and potatoes.

“I got a few fancy fixin’s up at the Summit this

morning, aunty,” he began apologetically, “seein’ we had

sick folks, you know―you and the young lady―and

thinkin’ it might save you trouble. I’ve got ‘em here,” and he

shyly produced the basket.

“If ye kin afford it, Jeff,” responded his aunt

resignedly, “I’m thankful.”

19

The reply was so unexpectedly mild for Aunt Sally,

that Jeff put his arms around her and kissed her hard cheek.

“And I’ve got some quail, aunty, knowin’ you liked em.”

“I reckoned you was up to some such foolishness,”

said Aunt Sally, wiping her cheek with her apron, “when I

missed yer gun from the hall.” But the allusion was a

dangerous one, and Jeff slipped away.

He breakfasted early with Yuba Bill that morning;

the latter gentleman’s taciturnity being intensified at such

moments through a long habit of confining himself strictly

to eating in the limited time allowed his daily repasts, and it

was not until they had taken the horses from the stable and

were harnessing them to the coach that Jeff extracted from

his companion some facts about his guests. They were Mr.

and Mrs. Mayfield, Eastern tourists, who had been to the

Sandwich Islands for the benefit of their daughter’s health,

and before returning to New York, intended, under the

advice of their physician, to further try the effects of

mountain air at the “Summit Hotel,” on the invalid. They

were apparently rich people, the coach had been engaged for

them solely―even the mail and express had been sent on by

a separate conveyance, so that they might be more

independent. It is hardly necessary to say that this fact was

by no means palatable to Bill―debarring him not only the

social contact and attentions of the “Express Agent,” but the

selection of a box-seated passenger who always “acted like

a man.”

“Ye kin kalkilate what kind of a pardner that ‘ar

yaller-livered Mayfield would make up on that box, partik’ly

ez I heard before we started that he’d requested the

kimpany’s agent in Sacramento to select a driver ez didn’t

cuss, smoke, or drink. He did, sir, by gum!”

20

“I reckon you were very careful, then, Bill,” said Jeff.

“In course,” returned Bill, with a perfectly diabolical

wink. “In course! You know that ‘Blue Grass,’” pointing out

a spirited leader; “she’s a fair horse ez horses go, but she’s

apt to feel her oats on a down grade, and takes a pow’ful deal

o’ soothin’ and explanation afore she buckles down to her

reg’lar work. Well, sir, I exhorted and labored in a Christian-

like way with that mare to that extent that I’m cussed if that

chap didn’t want to get down afore we got to the level!”

“And the ladies?” asked Jeff, whose laugh―possibly

from his morning’s experience―was not as ready as

formerly.

“The ladies! Ef you mean that ‘ar livin’ skellington I

packed up to yer house,” said Bill promptly, “it’s a pair of

them in size and color, and ready for any first-class

undertaker’s team in the kintry. Why, you remember that

curve on Break Neck hill, where the leaders allus look as if

they was alongside o’ the coach and faced the other way?

Well, that woman sticks her skull outer the window, and sez

she, confidential-like to old yaller-belly, sez she, ‘William

Henry,’ sez she, ‘tell that man his horses are running away!’”

“You didn’t get to see the―the―daughter, Bill, did

you?” asked Jeff, whose laugh had become quite uneasy.

“No, I didn’t,” said Bill, with sudden and

inexplicable vehemence, “and the less you see of her,

Jefferson Briggs, the better for you.”

Too confounded and confused by Bill’s manner to

question further, Jeff remained silent until they drew up at

the door of the “Half-way House.” But here another surprise

21

awaited him. Mr. Mayfield, erect and dignified, stood upon

the front porch as the coach drove up.

“Driver!” began Mr. Mayfield.

There was no reply.

“Driver,” said Mr. Mayfield, slightly weakening

under Bill’s eye, “I shall want you no longer. I have”―

“Is he speaking to me?” said Bill audibly to Jeff,

“‘cause they call me ‘Yuba Bill’ yer abouts.”

“He is,” said Jeff hastily.

“Mebbee he’s drunk,” said Bill audibly; “a drop or

two afore breakfast sometimes upsets his kind.”

“I was saying, Bill,” said Mr. Mayfield, becoming

utterly limp and weak again under Bill’s cold gray eyes,

“that I’ve changed my mind, and shall stop here awhile. My

daughter seems already benefited by the change. You can

take my traps from the boot and leave them here.”

Bill laid down his lines resignedly, coolly surveyed

Mr. Mayfield, the house, and the half-pleased, half-

frightened Jeff, and then proceeded to remove the luggage

from the boot, all the while whistling loud and offensive

incredulity. Then he climbed back to his box. Mr. Mayfield,

completely demoralized under this treatment, as a last resort

essayed patronage.

“You can say to the Sacramento agents, Bill, that I

am entirely satisfied, and”―

22

“Ye needn’t fear but I’ll give ye a good character,”

interrupted Bill coolly, gathering up his lines. The whip

snapped, the six horses dashed forward as one, the coach

plunged down the road and was gone.

With its disappearance, Mr. Mayfield stiffened

slightly again. “I have just told your aunt, Mr. Briggs,” he

said, turning upon Jeff, “that my daughter has expressed a

desire to remain here a few days; she has slept well, seems

to be invigorated by the air, and although we expected to go

on to the ‘Summit,’ Mrs. Mayfield and myself are willing to

accede to her wishes. Your house seems to be new and clean.

Your table―judging from the breakfast this morning―is

quite satisfactory.”

Jeff, in the first flush of delight at this news, forgot

what that breakfast had cost him―forgot all his morning’s

experience, and, I fear, when he did remember it, was too

full of a vague, hopeful courage to appreciate it. Conscious

of showing too much pleasure, he affected the necessity of

an immediate interview with his aunt, in the kitchen. But his

short cut round the house was arrested by a voice and figure.

It was Miss Mayfield, wrapped in a shawl and seated in a

chair, basking in the sunlight at one of the bleakest and barest

angles of the house. Jeff stopped in a delicious tremor.

As we are dealing with facts, however, it would be

well to look at the cause of this tremor with our own eyes

and not Jeff’s. To be plain, my dear madam, as she basked

in that remorseless, matter-of-fact California sunshine, she

looked her full age-twenty-five, if a day! There were

wrinkles in the corners of her dark eyes, contracted and

frowning in that strong, merciless light; there was a nervous

pallor in her complexion; but being one of those “fast

colored” brunettes, whose dyes are a part of their

temperament, no sickness nor wear could bleach it out. The

23

red of her small mouth was darker than yours, I wot, and

there were certain faint lines from the corners of her delicate

nostrils indicating alternate repression and excitement under

certain experiences, which are not found in the classic ideals.

Now Jeff knew nothing of the classic ideal―did not know

that a thousand years ago certain sensual idiots had, with

brush and chisel, inflicted upon the world the personification

of the strongest and most delicate, most controlling and most

subtle passion that humanity is capable of, in the likeness of

a thick-waisted, idealess, expressionless, perfectly contented

female animal; and that thousands of idiots had since then

insisted upon perpetuating this model for the benefit of a

world that had gone on sighing for, pining for, fighting for,

and occasionally blowing its brains out over types far

removed from that idiotic standard.

Consequently Jeff saw only a face full of possibilities

and probabilities, framed in a small delicate oval, saw a

slight woman’s form―more than usually small―and heard

a low voice, to him full of gentle pride, passion, pathos, and

human weakness, and was helpless.

“I only said ‘Good-morning,’” said Miss Mayfield,

with that slight, arch satisfaction in the observation of

masculine bashfulness, which the best of her sex cannot

forego.

“Thank you, miss; good-morning. I’ve been wanting

to say to you that I hope you wasn’t mad, you know,”

stammered Jeff, desperately intent upon getting off his

apology.

“It is so lovely this morning―such a change!”

continued Miss Mayfield.

24

“Yes, miss! You know I reckoned―at least what

your father said, made me kalkilate that you”―

Miss Mayfield, still smiling, knitted her brows and

went on: “I slept so well last night,” she said gratefully, “and

feel so much better this morning, that I ventured out. I seem

to be drinking in health in this clear sunlight.”

“Certainly miss. As I was sayin’, your father says his

daughter is in the coach; and Bill says, says he to me, ‘I’ll

pack―I’ll carry the old―I’ll bring up Mrs. Mayfield, if

you’ll bring up the daughter;’ and when we come to the

coach I saw you asleep―like in the corner, and bein’ small,

why miss, you know how nat’ral it is, I”―

“Oh, Mr. Jeff! Mr. Briggs!” said Miss Mayfield

plaintively, “don’t, please―don’t spoil the best compliment

I’ve had in many a year. You thought I was a child, I know,

and―well, you find,” she said audaciously, suddenly

bringing her black eyes to bear on him like a rifle, “you

find―well?”

What Jeff thought was inaudible but not invisible.

Miss Mayfield saw enough of it in his eye to protest with a

faint color in her cheek. Thus does Nature betray itself to

Nature the world over.

The color faded. “It’s a dreadful thing to be so weak

and helpless, and to put everybody to such trouble, isn’t it,

Mr. Jeff? I beg your pardon―your aunt calls you Jeff.”

“Please call me Jeff,” said Jeff, to his own surprise

rapidly gaining courage. “Everybody calls me that.”

25

Miss Mayfield smiled. “I suppose I must do what

everybody does. So it seems that we are to give you the

trouble of keeping us here until I get better or worse?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Therefore I won’t detain you now. I only wanted to

thank you for your gentleness last night, and to assure you

that the bear-skin did not give me my death.”

She smiled and nodded her small head, and wrapped

her shawl again closely around her shoulders, and turned her

eyes upon the mountains, gestures which the now quick-

minded Jeff interpreted as a gentle dismissal, and flew to

seek his aunt.

Here he grew practical. Ready money was needed;

for the “Half-way House” was such a public monument of

ill-luck, that Jeff had no credit. He must keep up the table to

the level of that fortunate breakfast―to do which he had

$1.50 in the till, left by Bill, and $2.50 produced by his Aunt

Sally from her work-basket.

“Why not ask Mr. Mayfield to advance ye suthin?”

said Aunt Sally.

The blood flew to Jeff’s face. “Never! Don’t say that

again, aunty.”

The tone and manner were so unlike Jeff that the old

lady sat down half frightened, and taking the corners of her

apron in her hands began to whimper.

“Thar now, aunty! I didn’t mean nothin’―only if

you care to have me about the place any longer, and I reckon

26

it’s little good I am any way,” he added, with a new-found

bitterness in his tone, “ye’ll not ask me to do that.”

“What’s gone o’ ye, Jeff?” said his aunt

lugubriously; “ye ain’t nat’ral like.”

Jeff laughed. “See here, aunty; I’m goin’ to take your

advice. You know Rabbit?”

“The mare?”

“Yes; I’m going to sell her. The blacksmith offered

me a hundred dollars for her last week.”

“Ef ye’d done that a month ago, Jeff, ez I wanted ye

to, instead o’ keeping the brute to eat ye out o’ house and

home, ye’d be better off.” Aunt Sally never let slip an

opportunity to “improve the occasion,” but preferred to

exhort over the prostrate body of the “improved.” “Well, I

hope he mayn’t change his mind.”

Jeff smiled at such suggestion regarding the best

horse within fifty miles of the “Half-way House.”

Nevertheless he went briskly to the stable, led out and

saddled a handsome grey mare, petting her the while, and

keeping up a running commentary of caressing epithets to

which Rabbit responded with a whinny and playful reaches

after Jeff’s red flannel sleeve. Whereat Jeff, having loved the

horse until it was displaced by another mistress, grew grave

and suddenly threw his arms around Rabbit’s neck, and then

taking Rabbit’s nose, thrust it in the bosom of his shirt and

held it there silently for a moment. Rabbit becoming uneasy,

Jeff’s mood changed too, and having caparisoned himself

and charger in true vaquero style, not without a little

Mexican dandyism as to the set of his doeskin trousers, and

27

the tie of his red sash, put a sombrero rakishly on his curls

and leaped into the saddle.

Jeff was a fair rider in a country where riding was

understood as a natural instinct, and not as a purely artificial

habit of horse and rider, consequently he was not perched

up, jockey fashion, with a knee-grip for his body, and a rein-

rest for his arms on the beast’s mouth, but rode with long,

loose stirrups, his legs clasping the barrel of his horse, his

single rein lying loose upon her neck, leaving her head free

as the wind. After this fashion he had often emerged from a

cloud of dust on the red mountain road, striking admiration

into the hearts of the wayfarers and coach-passengers, and

leaving a trail of pleasant incense in the dust behind him. It

was therefore with considerable confidence in himself, and

a little human vanity, that he dashed round the house, and

threw his mare skilfully on her haunches exactly a foot

before Miss Mayfield―himself a resplendent vision of

flying riata, crimson scarf, fawn-colored trousers, and

jingling silver spurs.

“Kin I do anythin’ for ye, miss, at the Forks?”

Miss Mayfield looked up quietly. “I think not,” she

said indifferently, as if the flaming-Jeff was a very common

occurrence.

Jeff here permitted the mare to bolt fifty yards,

caught her up sharply, swung her round on her off hind heel,

permitted her to paw the air once or twice with her white-

stockinged fore-feet, and then, with another dash forward,

pulled her up again just before she apparently took Miss

Mayfield and her chair in a running leap.

“Are you sure, miss?” asked Jeff, with a flushed face

and a rather lugubrious voice.

28

“Quite so, thank you,” she said coldly, looking past

this centaur to the wooded mountain beyond.

Jeff, thoroughly crushed, was pacing meekly away

when a childlike voice stopped him.

“If you are going near a carpenter’s shop you might

get a new shutter for my window; it blew away last night.”

“It did, miss?”

“Yes,” said the shrill voice of Aunt Sally, from the

doorway, “in course it did! Ye must be crazy, Jeff, for thar it

stands in Number 8, whar ye must have put it after ye picked

it up outside.”

Jeff, conscious that Miss Mayfield’s eyes were on his

suffused face, stammered “that he would attend to it,” and

put spurs to the mare, eager only to escape.

It was not his only discomfiture; for the blacksmith,

seeing Jeff’s nervousness and anxiety, was suspicious of

something wrong, as the world is apt to be, and appeased his

conscience after the worldly fashion, by driving a hard

bargain with the doubtful brother in affliction―the morality

of a horse trade residing always with the seller. Whereby

Master Jeff received only eighty dollars for horse and

outfit―worth at least two hundred―and was also mulcted

of forty dollars, principal and interest for past service of the

blacksmith. Jeff walked home with forty dollars in his

pocket―capital to prosecute his honest calling of innkeeper;

the blacksmith retired to an adjoining tavern to discuss Jeff’s

affairs, and further reduce his credit. Yet I doubt which was

the happier―the blacksmith estimating his possible gains,

and doubtful of some uncertain sequence in his luck, or Jeff,

temporarily relieved, boundlessly hopeful, and filled with

29

the vague delights of a first passion. The only discontented

brute in the whole transaction was poor Rabbit, who, missing

certain attentions, became indignant, after the manner of her

sex, bit a piece out of her crib, kicked a hole in her box, and

receiving a bad character from the blacksmith, gave a worse

one to her late master.

Jeff’s purchases were of a temporary and ornamental

quality, but not always judicious as a permanent investment.

Overhearing some remark from Miss Mayfield concerning

the dangerous character of the two-tined steel fork, which

was part of the table equipage of the “Half-way House,” he

purchased half a dozen of what his aunt was pleased to

specify as “split spoons,” and thereby lost his late good

standing with her. He not only repaired the window-shutter,

but tempered the glaring window itself with a bit of curtain;

he half carpeted Miss Mayfield’s bed-room with wild-cat

skins and the now historical bear-skin, and felt himself

overpaid when that young lady, passing the soft tabbyskins

across her cheek, declared they were “lovely.” For Miss

Mayfield, deprecating slaughter in the abstract, accepted its

results gratefully, like the rest of her sex, and while willing

to “let the hart ungalled play,” nevertheless was able to

console herself with its venison. The woods, besides yielding

aid and comfort of this kind to the distressed damsel, were

flamboyant with vivid spring blossoms, and Jeff lit up the

cold, white walls of her virgin cell with demonstrative color,

and made―what his aunt, a cleanly soul, whose ideas of that

quality were based upon the absence of any color whatever,

called―“a litter.”

The result of which was to make Miss Mayfield,

otherwise lanquid and ennuye, welcome Jeff’s presence with

a smile; to make Jeff, otherwise anxious, eager, and keenly

attentive, mute and silent in her presence. Two symptoms

bad for Jeff.

30

Meantime Mr. Mayfield’s small conventional spirit

pined for fellowship, only to be found in larger civilizations,

and sought, under plea of business, a visit to Sacramento,

where a few of the Mayfield type, still surviving, were to be

found.

This was a relief to Jeff, who only through his regard

for the daughter, was kept from open quarrel with the father.

He fancied Miss Mayfield felt relieved too, although Jeff had

noticed that Mayfield had deferred to his daughter more

often than his wife―over whom your conventional small

autocrat is always victorious. It takes the legal matrimonial

contract to properly develop the first-class tyrant, male or

female.

On one of these days Jeff was returning through the

woods from marketing at the Forks, which, since the sale of

Rabbit, had became a foot-sore and tedious business. He had

reached the edge of the forest, and through the wider-spaced

trees, the bleak sunlit plateau of his house was beginning to

open out, when he stopped instantly. I know not what Jeff

had been thinking of, as he trudged along, but here, all at

once, he was thrilled and possessed with the odor of some

faint, foreign perfume. He flushed a little at first, and then

turned pale. Now the woods were as full of as delicate, as

subtle, as grateful, and, I wot, far healthier and purer odors

than this; but this represented to Jeff the physical contiguity

of Miss Mayfield, who had the knack―peculiar to some of

her sex―of selecting a perfume that ideally identified her.

Jeff looked around cautiously; at the foot of a tree hard by

lay one of her wraps, still redolent of her. Jeff put down the

bag which, in lieu of a market basket, he was carrying on his

shoulder, and with a blushing face hid it behind a tree. It

contained her dinner!

31

He took a few steps forwards with an assumption of

ease and unconsciousness. Then he stopped, for not a

hundred yards distant sat―Miss Mayfield on a mossy

boulder, her cloak hanging from her shoulders, her hands

clasped round her crossed knees, and one little foot out―an

exasperating combination of Evangeline and little Red

Riding Hood in everything, I fear, but credulousness and

self-devotion. She looked up as he walked towards her (non

constat that the little witch had not already seen him half a

mile away!) and smiled sweetly as she looked at him. So

sweetly, indeed, that poor Jeff felt like the hulking wolf of

the old world fable, and hesitated―as that wolf did not. The

California faunae have possibly depreciated.

“Come here!” she cried, in a small head voice, not

unlike a bird’s twitter.

Jeff lumbered on clumsily. His high boots had

become suddenly very heavy.

“I’m so glad to see you. I’ve just tired poor mother

out―I’m always tiring people out―and she’s gone back to

the house to write letters. Sit down, Mr. Jeff, do, please!”

Jeff, feeling uncomfortably large in Miss Mayfield’s

presence, painfully seated himself on the edge of a very low

stone, which had the effect of bringing his knees up on a

level with his chin, and affected an ease glaringly simulated.

“Or lie down, there, Mr. Jeff―it is so comfortable.”

Jeff, with a dreadful conviction that he was crashing

down like a falling pine-tree, managed at last to acquire a

recumbent position at a respectful distance from the little

figure.

32

“There, isn’t it nice?”

“Yes, Miss Mayfield.”

“But, perhaps,” said Miss Mayfield, now that she had

him down, “perhaps you too have got something to do. Dear

me! I’m like that naughty boy in the story-book, who went

round to all the animals, in turn, asking them to play with

him. He could only find the butterfly who had nothing to do.

I don’t wonder he was disgusted. I hate butterflies.”

Love clarifies the intellect! Jeff, astonished at

himself, burst out, “Why, look yer, Miss Mayfield, the

butterfly only hez a day or two to―to―to live and―be

happy!”

Miss Mayfield crossed her knees again, and

instantly, after the sublime fashion of her sex, scattered his

intellect by a swift transition from the abstract to the

concrete. “But you’re not a butterfly, Mr. Jeff. You’re

always doing something. You’ve been hunting.”

“No-o!” said Jeff, scarlet, as he thought of his gun in

pawn at the “Summit.”

“But you do hunt; I know it.”

“How?”

“You shot those quail for me the morning after I

came. I heard you go out―early―very early.”

“Why, you allowed you slept so well that night, Miss

Mayfield.”

33

“Yes; but there’s a kind of delicious half-sleep that

sick people have sometimes, when they know and are

gratefully conscious that other people are doing things for

them, and it makes them rest all the sweeter.”

There was a dead silence. Jeff, thrilling all over,

dared not say anything to dispel his delicious dream. Miss

Mayfield, alarmed at his readiness with the butterfly

illustration, stopped short. They both looked at the prospect,

at the distant “Summit Hotel”―a mere snow-drift on the

mountain―at the clear sunlight on the barren plateau, at the

bleak, uncompromising “Half-way House,” and said

nothing.

“I ought to be very grateful,” at last began Miss

Mayfield, in quite another voice, and a suggestion that she

was now approaching real and profitable conversation, “that

I’m so much better. This mountain air has been like balm to

me. I feel I am growing stronger day by day. I do not wonder

that you are so healthy and so strong as you are, Mr. Jeff.”

Jeff, who really did not know before that he was so

healthy, apologetically admitted the fact. At the same time,

he was miserably conscious that Miss Mayfield’s condition,

despite her ill health, was very superior to his own.

“A month ago,” she continued reflectively, “my

mother would never have thought it possible to leave me

here alone. Perhaps she may be getting worried now.”

Miss Mayfield had calculated over much on Jeff’s

recumbent position. To her surprise and slight mortification,

he rose instantly to his feet, and said anxiously,

“Ef you think so, miss, p’raps I’m keeping you here.”

34

“Not at all, Mr. Jeff. Your being here is a sufficient

excuse for my staying,” she replied, with the large dignity of

a small body.

Jeff, mentally and physically crushed again, came

down a little heavier than before, and reclined humbly at her

feet. Second knock-down blow for Miss Mayfield.

“Come, Mr. Jeff,” said the triumphant goddess, in her

first voice, “tell me something about yourself. How do you

live here―I mean; what do you do? You ride, of

course―and very well too, I can tell you! But you know that.

And of course that scarf and the silver spurs and the whole

dashing equipage are not intended entirely for yourself. No!

Some young woman is made happy by that exhibition, of

course. Well, then, there’s the riding down to see her, and

perhaps the riding out with her, and―what else?”

“Miss Mayfield,” said Jeff, suddenly rising above his

elbow and his grammar, “thar isn’t no young woman! Thar

isn’t another soul except yourself that I’ve laid eyes on, or

cared to see since I’ve been yer. Ef my aunt hez been telling

ye that―she’s―she―she―she―she―lies.”

Absolute, undiluted truth, even of a complimentary

nature, is confounding to most women. Miss Mayfield was

no exception to her sex. She first laughed, as she felt she

ought to, and properly might with any other man than Jeff;

then she got frightened, and said hurriedly, “No, no! you

misunderstand me. Your aunt has said nothing.” And then

she stopped with a pink spot on her cheek-bones. First blood

for Jeff!

Now this would never do; it was worse than the

butterflies! She rose to her full height―four feet eleven and

a half―and drew her cloak over her shoulders. “I think I will

35

return to the house,” she said quietly; “I suppose I ought not

to overtask my strength.”

“You’d better let me go with you, miss,” said Jeff

submissively.

“I will, on one condition,” she said, recovering her

archness, with a little venom in it, I fear. “You were going

home, too, when I called to you. Now, I do not intend to let

you leave that bag behind that tree, and then have to come

back for it, just because you feel obliged to go with me.

Bring it with you on one arm, and I’ll take the other, or

else―I’ll go alone. Don’t be alarmed,” she added softly;

“I’m stronger than I was the first night I came, when you

carried me and all my worldly goods besides.”

She turned upon him her subtle magnetic eyes, and

looked at him as she had the first night they met. Jeff turned

away bewildered, but presently appeared again with the bag

on his shoulder, and her wrap on his arm. As she slipped her

little hand over his sleeve, he began, apologetically and

nervously,

“When I said that about Aunt Sally, miss, I”―

The hand immediately became limp, the grasp

conventional.

“I was mad, miss,” Jeff blundered on, “and I don’t

see how you believed it―knowing everything ez you do.”

“How knowing everything as I do?” asked Miss

Mayfield coldly.

“Why, about the quail, and about the bag!”

36

“Oh,” said Miss Mayfield.

Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his

coach in his utter amazement at an apparently simple

spectacle―a tall, good-looking young fellow, in a red shirt

and high boots, carrying a bag on his back, and beside him,

hanging confidentially on his arm, a small, slight, pretty girl

in a red cloak. “Nothing mean about her, eh, Bill?” said as

admiring box-passenger. “Young couple, I reckon, just out

from the States.”

“No!” roared Bill.

“Oh, well, his sweetheart, I reckon?” suggested the

box-passenger.

“Nary time!” growled Bill. “Look yer! I know ‘em

both, and they knows me. Did ye notiss she never drops his

arm when she sees the stage comin’, but kinder trapes along

jist the same? Had they been courtin’, she’d hev dropped his

arm like pizen, and walked on t’other side the road.”

Nevertheless, for some occult reason, Bill was

evidently out of humor; and for the next few miles exhorted

the impenitent Blue Grass horse with considerable fervor.

Meanwhile this pair, outwardly the picture of

pastoral conjugality, slowly descended the hill. In that brief

time, failing to get at any further facts regarding Jeff’s life,

or perhaps reading the story quite plainly, Miss Mayfield had

twittered prettily about herself. She painted her tropic life in

the Sandwich Islands―her delicious “laziness,” as she

called it; “for, you know,” she added, “although I had the

excuse of being an invalid, and of living in the laziest climate

in the world, and of having money, I think, Mr. Jeff, that I’m

naturally lazy. Perhaps if I lived here long enough, and got

37

well again, I might do something, but I don’t think I could

ever be like your aunt. And there she is now, Mr. Jeff,

making signs for you to hasten. No, don’t mind me, but run

on ahead; else I shall have her blaming me for demoralizing

you too. Go; I insist upon it! I can walk the rest of the way

alone. Will you go? You won’t? Then I shall stop here and

not stir another step forward until you do.”

She stopped, half jestingly, half earnestly, in the

middle of the road, and emphasized her determination with

a nod of her head―an action that, however, shook her hat

first rakishly over one eye, and then on the ground. At which

Jeff laughed, picked it up, presented it to her, and then ran

off to the house.

38

39

Chapter 3

His aunt met him angrily on the porch. “Thar ye are

at last, and yer’s a stranger waitin to see you. He’s been axin

all sorts o’ questions, about the house and the business, and

kinder snoopin’ round permiskiss. I don’t like his looks, Jeff,

but thet’s no reason why ye should be gallivantin’ round in

business hours.”

A large, thick-set man, with a mechanical smile that

was an overt act of false pretense, was lounging in the bar-

room. Jeff dimly remembered to have seen him at the last

county election, distributing tickets at the polls. This gave

Jeff a slight prejudice against him, but a greater presentiment

of some vague evil in the air caused him to motion the

stranger to an empty room in the angle of the house behind

the barroom, which was too near the hall through which Miss

Mayfield must presently pass.

It was an infelicitous act of precaution, for at that

very moment Miss Mayfield slowly passed beneath its open

window, and seeing her chair in the sunny angle, dropped

into it for rest and possibly meditation. Consequently she

overheard every word of the following colloquy.

The Stranger’s voice: “Well, now, seein’ ez I’ve been

waitin’ for ye over an hour, off and on, and ez my bizness

with ye is two words, it strikes me yer puttin’ on a little too

much style in this yer interview, Mr. Jefferson Briggs.”

Jeff’s voice (a little husky with restraint): “What is

yer business?”

40

The stranger’s voice (lazily): “It’s an attachment on

this yer property for principal, interest, and costs―one

hundred and twelve dollars and’ seventy-five cents, at the

suit of Cyrus Parker.”

Jeff’s voice (in quick surprise): “Parker? Why, I saw

him only yesterday, and he agreed to wait a spell longer.”

The Stranger’s voice: “Mebbee he did! Mebbee he

heard afterwards suthin’ about the goin’s on up yar. Mebbee

he heard suthin’ o’ property bein’ converted into ready

cash―sich property ez horses, guns, and sich! Mebbee he

heard o’ gay and festive doin’s―chickin every day, fresh

eggs, butcher’s meat, port wine, and sich! Mebbee he

allowed that his chances o’ gettin’ his own honest grub outer

his debt was lookin’ mighty slim! Mebbee” (louder) “he

thought he’d ask the man who bought yer horse, and the man

you pawned your gun to, what was goin’ on! Mebbee he

thought he’d like to get a holt a suthin’ himself, even if it

was only some of that yar chickin and port wine!”

Jeff’s voice (earnestly and hastily): “They’re not for

me. I have a family boarding here, with a sick daughter. You

don’t think―”

The Stranger’s voice (lazily): “I reckon! I seed you

and her pre-ambulating down the hill, lockin’ arms. A good

deal o’ style, Jeff―fancy! expensive! How does Aunt Sally

take it?”

A slight shaking of the floor and window―a dead

silence.

The Stranger’s voice (very faintly): “For God’s sake,

let me up!”

41

Jeff’s voice (very distinctly): “Another word! raise

your voice above a whisper, and by the living G―”

Silence.

The Stranger’s voice (gasping): “I―I―promise!”

Jeff’s voice (low and desperate): “Get up out of that!

Sit down thar! Now hear me! I’m not resisting your process.

If you had all h-ll as witnesses you daren’t say that. I’ve shut

up your foul jaw, and kept it from poisoning the air, and

thar’s no law in Californy agin it! Now listen. What! You

will, will you?”

Everything quiet; a bird twittering on the window

ledge, nothing more.

The Stranger’s voice (very huskily): “I cave! Gimme

some whiskey.”

Jeff’s voice: “When we’re through. Now listen! You

can take possession of the house; you can stand behind the

bar and take every cent that comes in; you can prevent

anything going out; but as long as Mr. Mayfield and his

family stay here, by the living God―law or no law―I’ll be

boss here, and they shall never know it!”

The Stranger’s voice (weakly and submissively):

“That sounds square. Anythin’ not agin the law and in

reason, Jeff!”

Jeff’s voice: “I mean to be square. Here is all the

money I have, ten dollars. Take it for any extra trouble you

may have to satisfy me.”

A pause―the clinking of coin.

42

The Stranger’s voice (deprecatingly): “Well! I

reckon that would be about fair. Consider the trouble” (a

weak laugh here) “just now. ‘Tain’t every man ez hez your

grip. He! he! Ef ye hadn’t took me so suddent like―he!

he!―well!―how about that ar whiskey?”

Jeff’s voice (coolly): “I’ll bring it.”

Steps, silence, coughing, spitting, and throat-clearing

from the stranger.

Steps again, and the click of glass.

The Stranger’s voice (submissively): “In course I

must go back to the Forks and fetch up my duds. Ye know

what I mean! Thar now―don’t, Mr. Jeff!”

Jeff’s voice (sternly): “If I find you go back on

me―”

The Stranger’s voice (hurriedly): “Thar’s my hand

on it. Ye can count on Jim Dodd.”

Steps again. Silence. A bird lights on the window

ledge, and peers into the room. All is at rest.

Jeff and the deputy-sheriff walked through the bar-

room and out on the porch. Miss Mayfield in an arm-chair

looked up from her book.

“I’ve written a letter to my father that I’d like to have

mailed at the Forks this afternoon,” she said, looking from

Jeff to the stranger; “perhaps this gentleman will oblige me

by taking it, if he’s going that way.”

“I’ll take it, miss,” said Jeff hurriedly.

43

“No,” said Miss Mayfield archly, “I’ve taken up too

much of your time already.”

“I’m at your service, miss,” said the stranger,

considerably affected by the spectacle of this pretty girl, who

certainly at that moment, in her bright eyes and slightly pink

cheeks, belied the suggestion of ill health.

“Thank you. Dear me!” She was rummaging in a

reticule and in her pocket, etcetera. “Oh, Mr. Jeff!”

“Yes, miss?”

“I’m so frightened!”

“How, miss?”

“I have―yes!―I have left that letter on the stump in

the woods, where I was sitting when you came. Would

you―”

Jeff darted into the house, seized his hat, and stopped.

He was thinking of the stranger.

“Could you be so kind?”

Jeff looked in her agitated face, cast a meaning

glance at the stranger, and was off like a shot.

The fire dropped out of Miss Mayfield’s eyes and

cheeks. She turned toward the stranger.

“Please step this way.”

She always hated her own childish treble. But just at

that moment she thought she had put force and dignity into

44

it, and was correspondingly satisfied. The deputy sheriff was

equally pleased, and came towards the upright little figure

with open admiration.

“Your name is Dodd―James Dodd?”

“Yes, miss.”

“You are the deputy sheriff of the county? Don’t look

round―there is no one here!”

“Well, miss―if you say so―yes!”

“My father―Mr. Mayfield―understood so. I regret

he is not here. I regret still more I could not have seen you

before you saw Mr. Briggs, as he wished me to.”

“Yes, miss.”

“My father is a friend of Mr. Briggs, and knows

something of his affairs. There was a debt to a Mr. Parker”

(here Miss Mayfield apparently consulted an entry in her

tablets) “of one hundred and twelve dollars and seventy-five

cents―am I right?”

The deputy, with great respect: “That is the figgers.”

“Which he wished to pay without the knowledge of

Mr. Briggs, who would not have consented to it.”

The official opened his eyes. “Yes, miss.”

“Well, as Mr. Mayfield is NOT here, I am here to pay

it for him. You can take a check on Wells, Fargo &

Company, I suppose?”

45

“Certainly, miss.”

She took a check-book and pen and ink from her

reticule, and filled up a check. She handed it to him, and the

pen and ink. “You are to give me a receipt.”

The deputy looked at the matter-of-fact little figure,

and signed and handed over the receipted bill.

“My father said Mr. Briggs was not to know this.”

“Certainly not, miss.”

“It was Mr. Briggs’ intention to let the judgment take

its course, and give up the house. You are a man of business,

Mr. Dodd, and know that this is ridiculous!”

The deputy laughed. “In course, miss.”

“And whatever Mr. Briggs may have proposed to

you to do, when you go back to the Forks, you are to write

him a letter, and say that you will simply hold the judgment

without levy.”

“All right, miss,” said the deputy, not ill-pleased to

hold himself in this superior attitude to Jeff.

“And―”

“Yes, miss?”

She looked steadily at him. “Mr. Briggs told my

father that he would pay you ten dollars for the privilege of

staying here.”

“Yes, miss.”

46

“And, of course, THAT’S not necessary now.”

“No-o, miss.”

A very small white hand―a mere child’s hand―was

here extended, palm uppermost.

The official, demoralized completely, looked at it a

moment, then went into his pockets and counted out into the

palm the coins given by Jeff; they completely filled the tiny

receptacle.

Miss Mayfield counted the money gravely, and

placed it in her portemonnaie with a snap.

Certain qualities affect certain natures. This practical

business act of the diminutive beauty before him―albeit he

was just ten dollars out of pocket by it―struck the official

into helpless admiration. He hesitated.

“That’s all,” said Miss Mayfield coolly; “you need

not wait. The letter was only an excuse to get Mr. Briggs out

of the way.”

“I understand ye, miss.” He hesitated still. “Do you

reckon to stop in these parts long?”

“I don’t know.”

“‘Cause ye ought to come down some day to the

Forks.”

“Yes.”

“Good morning, miss.”

47

“Good morning.”

Yet at the corner of the house the rascal turned and

looked back at the little figure in the sunlight. He had just

been physically overcome by a younger man―he had lost

ten dollars―he had a wife and three children. He forgot all

this. He had been captivated by Miss Mayfield!

That practical heroine sat there five minutes. At the

end of that time Jeff came bounding down the hill, his curls

damp with perspiration; his fresh, honest face the picture of

woe, HER woe, for the letter could not be found!

“Never mind, Mr. Jeff. I wrote another and gave it to

him.”

Two tears were standing on her cheeks. Jeff turned

white.

“Good God, miss!”

“It’s nothing. You were right, Mr. Jeff! I ought not to

have walked down here alone. I’m very, very tired,

and―so―so miserable.”

What woman could withstand the anguish of that

honest boyish face? I fear Miss Mayfield could, for she

looked at him over her handkerchief, and said: “Perhaps you

had something to say to your friend, and I’ve sent him off.”

“Nothing,” said Jeff hurriedly; and she saw that all

his other troubles had vanished at the sight of her weakness.

She rose tremblingly from her seat. “I think I will go in now,

but I think―I think―I must ask you to―to―carry me!”

Oh, lame and impotent conclusion!

48

The next moment, Jeff, pale, strong, passionate, but

tender as a mother, lifted her in his arms and brought her into

the sitting-room. A simultaneous ejaculation broke from

Aunt Sally and Mrs. Mayfield―the possible comment of

posterity on the whole episode.

“Well, Jeff, I reckoned you’d be up to suthin’ like

that!”

“Well, Jessie! I knew you couldn’t be trusted.”

Mr. James Dodd did not return from the Forks that

afternoon, to Jeff’s vague uneasiness. Towards evening a

messenger brought a note from him, written on the back of a

printed legal form, to this effect:

DEAR SIR―Seeing as you Intend to act on the

Square in regard to that little Mater I have aranged

Things so that I ant got to stop with you but I’ll drop

in onct in a wile to keep up a show for a

Drink―respy yours, J. DODD.

In this latter suggestion our legal Cerberus exhibited

all three of his heads at once. One could keep faith with Miss

Mayfield, one could see her “onct in a wile,” and one could

drink at Jeff’s expense. Innocent Jeff saw only generosity

and kindness in the man he had half-choked, and a sense of

remorse and shame almost outweighed the relief of his

absence. “He might hev been ugly,” said Jeff. He did not

know how, in this selfish world, there is very little room for

gratuitous, active ugliness.

49

Miss Mayfield did not leave her room that afternoon.

The wind was getting up, and it was growing dark when Jeff,

idly sitting on his porch, hoping for her appearance, was

quite astounded at the apparition of Yuba Bill as a

pedestrian, dusty and thirsty, making for his usual

refreshment. Jeff brought out the bottle, but could not refrain

from mixing his verbal astonishment with the conventional

cocktail. Bill, partaking of his liquor and becoming once

more a speaking animal, slowly drew off his heavy, baggy

driving gloves. No one had ever seen Bill without them―he

was currently believed to sleep in them―and when he laid

them on the counter they still retained the grip of his hand,

which gave them an entertaining likeness to two plethoric

and overfed spiders.

“Ef I concluded to pass over my lines to a friend and

take a pasear up yer this evening,” said Bill, eying Jeff

sharply, “I don’t know ez thar’s any law agin it! Onless yer

keepin’ a private branch o’ the Occidental Ho-tel, and on’y

take in fash’n’ble fammerlies!”

Jeff, with a rising color, protested against such a

supposition.

“Because ef ye ARE,” said Bill, lifting his voice, and

crushing one of the overgrown spiders with his fist, “I’ve got

a word or two to say to the son of Joe Briggs of Tuolumne.

Yes, sir! Joe Briggs―yer father―ez blew his brains out for

want of a man ez could stand up and say a word to him at the

right time.”

“Bill,” said Jeff, in a low, resolute tone―that tone

yielded up only from the smitten chords of despair and

desperation―“thar’s a sick woman in the house. I’ll listen to

anything you’ve got to say if you’ll say it quietly. But you

must and SHALL speak low.”

50

Real men quickly recognize real men the world over;

it is only your shams who fence and spar. Bill, taking in the

voice of the speaker more than his words, dropped his own.

“I said I had a kepple of words to say to ye. Thar isn’t

any time in the last fower months―ever since ye took stock

in this old shanty, for the matter o’ that―that I couldn’t hev

said them to ye. I’ve knowed all your doin’s. I’ve knowed

all your debts, ‘spesh’ly that ye owe that sneakin’ hound

Parker; and thar isn’t a time that I couldn’t and wouldn’t hev

chipped in and paid ‘em for ye―for your father’s sake―ef

I’d allowed it to be the square thing for ye. But I know ye,

Jeff. I know what’s in your BLOOD. I knew your

father―allus dreamin’, hopin,’ waitin’; I know YOU, Jeff,

dreamin’, hopin’, waitin’ till the end. And I stood by, givin’

you a free rein, and let it come!”

Jeff buried his face in his hands.

“It ain’t your blame―it’s blood! It ain’t a week ago

ez the kimpany passes me over a hoss. ‘Three-quarters

Morgan,’ sez they. Sez I: ‘Wot’s the other quarter?’ Sez

they: ‘A Mexican half-breed.’ Well, she was a fair sort of

hoss. Comin’ down Heavytree Hill last trip, we meets a

drove o’ Spanish steers. In course she goes wild directly.

Blood!”

Bill raised his glass, softly swirled its contents round

and round, tasted it, and set it down.

“The kepple o’ words I had to say to ye was this: Git

up and git!”

Something like this had passed through Jeff’s mind

the day before the Mayfields came. Something like it had

51

haunted him once or twice since. He turned quickly upon the

speaker.

“Ez how? you sez,” said Bill, catching at the hook. “I

drives up yer some night, and you sez to me, ‘Bill, hev you

got two seats over to the Divide for me and aunty―out on a

pasear.’ And I sez, ‘I happen to hev one inside and one on

the box with me.’ And you hands out yer traps and any

vallybles ye don’t want ter leave, and you puts your aunt

inside, and gets up on the box with me. And you sez to me,

ez man to man, ‘Bill,’ sez you, ‘might you hev a kepple o’

hundred dollars about ye that ye could lend a man ez was

leaving the county, dead broke?’ and I sez, ‘I’ve got it, and I

know of an op’nin’ for such a man in the next county.’ And

you steps into THAT op’nin’, and your creditors―‘spesh’ly

Parker―slips into THIS, and in a week they offers to settle

with ye ten cents on the dollar.”

Jeff started, flushed, trembled, recovered himself,

and after a moment said, doggedly: “I can’t do it, Bill; I

couldn’t.”

“In course,” said Bill, putting his hands slowly into

his pockets, and stretching his legs out―“in course ye can’t

because of a woman!”

Jeff turned upon him like a hunted bear. Both men

rose, but Bill already had his hand on Jeff’s shoulder.

“I reckoned a minute ago there was a sick gal in the

house! Who’s going to make a row now! Who’s going to

stamp and tear round, eh?”

Jeff sank back on his chair.

52

“I said thar was a woman,” continued Bill; “thar allus

is one! Let a man be hell-bent or heaven-bent, somewhere in

his track is a woman’s feet. I don’t say anythin’ agin this gal,

ez a gal. The best of ‘em, Jeff, is only guide-posts to p’int a

fellow on his right road, and only a fool or a drunken man

holds on to ‘em or leans agin em. Allowin’ this gal is all you

think she is, how far is your guide-post goin’ with ye, eh? Is

she goin’ to leave her father and mother for ye? Is she goin’

to give up herself and her easy ways and her sicknesses for

ye? Is she willin’ to take ye for a perpetooal landlord the rest

of her life? And if she is, Jeff, are ye the man to let her? Are

ye willin’ to run on her errants, to fetch her dinners ez ye do?

Thar ez men ez does it; not yer in Californy, but over in the

States thar’s fellows is willing to take that situation. I’ve

heard,” continued Bill, in a low, mysterious voice, as of one

describing the habits of the Anthropophagi―“I’ve heard o’

fellows ez call themselves men, sellin’ of themselves to rich

women in that way. I’ve heard o’ rich gals buyin’ of men for

their shape; sometimes―but thet’s in furrin’ kintries―for

their pedigree! I’ve heard o’ fellows bein’ in that business,

and callin’ themselves men instead o’ hosses! Ye ain’t that

kind o’ man, Jeff. ‘Tain’t in yer blood. Yer father was a fool

about women, and in course they ruined him, as they allus

do the best men. It’s on’y the fools and sneaks ez a woman

ever makes anythin’ out of. When ye hear of a man a woman

hez made, ye hears of a nincompoop. And when they does

produce ‘em in the way o’ nater, they ain’t responsible for

‘em, and sez they’re the image o’ their fathers! Ye ain’t a

man ez is goin’ to trust yer fate to a woman!”

“No,” said Jeff darkly.

“I reckoned not,” said Bill, putting his hands in his

pockets again. “Ye might if ye was one o’ them kind o’

fellows as kem up from ‘Frisco with her to Sacramento. One

53

o’ them kind o’ fellows ez could sling poetry and French and

Latin to her―one of HER kind―but ye ain’t! No, sir!”

Unwise William of Yuba! In any other breast but

Jeff’s that random shot would have awakened the irregular

auxiliary of love―jealousy! But Jeff, being at once proud

and humble, had neither vanity nor conceit, without which

jealousy is impossible. Yet he winced a little, for he had

feeling, and then said earnestly:

“Do you think that opening you spoke of would hold

for a day or two longer?”

“I reckon.”

“Well, then, I think I can settle up matters here my

own way, and go with you, Bill.”

He had risen, and yet hesitatingly kept his hand on

the back of his chair. “Bill!”

“Jeff!”

“I want to ask you a question; speak up, and don’t

mind me, but say the truth.”

Our crafty Ulysses, believing that he was about to be

entrapped, ensconced himself in his pockets, cocked one

eye, and said: “Go on, Jeff.”

“Was my father VERY bad?”

Bill took his hands from his pockets. “Thar isn’t a

man ez crawls above his grave ez is worthy to lie in the same

ground with him!”

54

“Thank you, Bill. Good night; I’m going to turn in!”

“Look yar, boy! G-d d―n it all, Jeff! what do ye

mean?”

There were two tears―twin sisters of those in his

sweetheart’s eyes that afternoon―now standing in Jeff’s!

Bill caught both his hands in his own. Had they been

of the Latin race they would have, right honestly, taken each

other in their arms, and perhaps kissed! Being Anglo-

Saxons, they gripped each other’s hands hard, and one, as

above stated, swore!

When Jeff ascended to his room that night he went

directly to his trunk and took out Miss Mayfield’s slipper.

Alack! during the day Aunt Sally had “put things to rights”

in his room, and the trunk had been moved. This had

somewhat disordered its contents, and Miss Mayfield’s

slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley’s

cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a

coral earring which Jeff―on the most apocryphal

authority―fondly believed belonged to his mother, whom

he had never seen, and a small silver school medal which

Jeff had once received for “good conduct,” much to his own

surprise, but which he still religiously kept as evidence of

former conventional character. He colored a little, rubbed the

medal and earring ruefully on his sleeve, replaced them in

his trunk, and then hastily emptied the rest of the slipper’s

contents on the floor. This done, he drew off his boots, and,

gliding noiselessly down the stair, hung the slipper on the

knob of Miss Mayfield’s door, and glided back again without

detection.

Rolling himself in his blankets, he lay down on his

bed. But not to sleep! Staringly wide awake, he at last felt

55

the lulling of the wind that nightly shook his casement, and

listened while the great, rambling, creaking, disjointed

“Half-way House” slowly settled itself to repose. He thought

of many things; of himself, of his past, of his future, but

chiefly, I fear, of the pale proud face now sleeping

contentedly in the chamber below him. He tossed with many

plans and projects, more or less impracticable, and then

began to doze. Whereat the moon, creeping in the window,

laid a cold white arm across him, and eventually dried a few

foolish tears upon his sleeping lashes.

56

57

Chapter 4

Aunt Sally was making pies in the kitchen the next

morning when Jeff hesitatingly stole upon her. The moment

was not a felicitous one. Pie-making was usually an

aggressive pursuit with Aunt Sally, entered into severely,

and prosecuted unto the bitter end. After watching her a few

moments Jeff came up and placed his arms tenderly around

her. People very much in love find relief, I am told, in this

vicarious expression.

“Aunty.”

“Well, Jeff! Thar, now―yer gittin’ all dough!”

Nevertheless, the hard face relaxed a little. Something of a

smile stole round her mouth, showing what she might have

been before theology and bitters had supplied the natural

feminine longings.

“Aunty dear!”

“You―boy!”

It WAS a boy’s face―albeit bearded like the pard,

with an extra fierceness in the mustaches―that looked upon

hers. She could not help bestowing a grim floury kiss upon

it.

“Well, what is it now?”

“I’m thinking, aunty, it’s high time you and me

packed up our traps and ‘shook’ this yar shanty, and located

58

somewhere else.” Jeff’s voice was ostentatiously cheerful,

but his eyes were a little anxious.

“What for NOW?”

Jeff hastily recounted his ill luck, and the various

reasons―excepting of course the dominant one―for his

resolution.

“And when do you kalkilate to go?”

“If you’ll look arter things here,” hesitated Jeff, “I

reckon I’ll go up along with Bill to-morrow, and look round

a bit.”

“And how long do you reckon that gal would stay

here after yar gone?”

This was a new and startling idea to Jeff. But in his

humility he saw nothing in it to flatter his conceit. Rather the

reverse. He colored, and then said apologetically―

“I thought that you and Jinny could get along without

me. The butcher will pack the provisions over from the

Fork.”

Laying down her rolling-pin, Aunt Sally turned upon

Jeff with ostentatious deliberation. “Ye ain’t,” she began

slowly, “ez taking a man with wimmen ez your father

was―that’s a fact, Jeff Briggs! They used to say that no

woman as he went for could get away from him. But ye don’t

mean to say yer think yer not good enough―such as ye

are―for this snip of an old maid, ez big as a gold dollar, and

as yaller?”

59

“Aunty,” said Jeff, dropping his boyish manner, and

his color as suddenly, “I’d rather ye wouldn’t talk that way

of Miss Mayfield. Ye don’t know her; and there’s times,” he

added, with a sigh, “ez I reckon ye don’t quite know ME

either. That young lady, bein’ sick, likes to be looked after.

Any one can do that for her. She don’t mind who it is. She

don’t care for me except for that, and,” added Jeff humbly,

“it’s quite natural.”

“I didn’t say she did,” returned Aunt Sally viciously;

“but seeing ez you’ve got an empty house yer on yer hands,

and me a-slavin’ here on jist nothin’, if this gal, for the sake

o’ gallivantin’ with ye for a spell, chooses to stay here and

keep her family here, and pay high for it, I don’t see why it

ain’t yer duty to Providence and me to take advantage of it.”

Jeff raised his eyes to his aunt’s face. For the first

time it struck him that she might be his father’s sister and yet

have no blood in her veins that answered to his. There are

few shocks more startling and overpowering to original

natures than this sudden sense of loneliness. Jeff could not

speak, but remained looking fiercely at her.

Aunt Sally misinterpreted his silence, and returned to

her work on the pies. “The gal ain’t no fool,” she continued,

rolling out the crust as if she were laying down broad

propositions. “SHE reckons on it too, ez if it was charged in

the bill with the board and lodging. Why, didn’t she say to

me, last night, that she kalkilated afore she went away to

bring up some friends from ‘Frisco for a few days’ visit? and

didn’t she say, in that pipin’, affected voice o’ hers, ‘I

oughter make some return for yer kindness and yer nephew’s

kindness, Aunt Sally, by showing people that can help you,

and keep your house full, how pleasant it is up here.’ She

ain’t no fool, with all her faintin’s and dyin’s away! No, Jeff

Briggs. And if she wants to show ye off agin them city

60

fellows ez she knows, and ye ain’t got spunk enough to stand

up and show off with her―why”―she turned her head

impatiently, but he was gone.

If Jeff had ever wavered in his resolution he would

have been steady enough NOW. But he had never wavered;

the convictions and resolutions of suddenly awakened

character are seldom moved by expediency. He was eager to

taste the bitter dregs of his cup at once. He began to pack his

trunk, and make his preparations for departure. Without

avoiding Miss Mayfield in this new excitement, he no longer

felt the need of her presence. He had satisfied his feverish

anxieties by placing his trunk in the hall beside his open

door, and was sitting on his bed, wrestling with a faded and

overtasked carpet-bag that would not close and accept his

hard conditions, when a small voice from the staircase

thrilled him. He walked to the corridor, and, looking down,

beheld Miss Mayfield midway on the steps of the staircase.

She had never looked so beautiful before! Jeff had

only seen her in those soft enwrappings and half-deshabille

that belong to invalid femininity. Always refined and modest

thus, in her present walking-costume there was added a

slight touch of coquettish adornment. There was a brightness

of color in her cheek and eye, partly the result of climbing

the staircase, partly the result of that audacious impulse that

had led her―a modest virgin―to seek a gentleman in this

personal fashion. Modesty in a young girl has a comfortable

satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; but he

must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously

thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over

the threshold of Propriety.

“The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so

Mohammed must come to the mountain,” said Miss

Mayfield. “Mother is asleep, Aunt Sally is at work in the

61

kitchen, and here am I, already dressed for a ramble in this

bright afternoon sunshine, and no one to go with me. But,

perhaps, you, too, are busy?”

“No, miss. I will be with you in a moment.”

I wish I could say that he went back to calm his

pulses, which the dangerous music of Miss Mayfield’s voice

had set to throbbing, by a few moments’ calm and

dispassionate reflection. But he only returned to brush his

curls out of his eyes and ears, and to button over his blue

flannel shirt a white linen collar, which he thought might

better harmonize with Miss Mayfield’s attire.

She was sitting on the staircase, poking her parasol

through the balusters. “You need not have taken that trouble,

Mr. Jeff,” she said pleasantly. “YOU are a part of this

mountain picture at all times; but I am obliged to think of

dress.”

“It was no trouble, miss.”

Something in the tone of his voice made her look in

his face as she rose. It was a trifle paler, and a little older.

The result, doubtless, thought Miss Mayfield, of his

yesterday’s experience with the deputy-sheriff.

Such was her rapid deduction. Nevertheless, after the

fashion of her sex, she immediately began to argue from

quite another hypothesis.

“You are angry with me, Mr. Jeff.”

“What, I―Miss Mayfield?”

“Yes, you!”

62

“Miss Mayfield!”

“Oh yes, you are. Don’t deny it?”

“Upon my soul―”

“Yes! You give me punishments and―penances!”

Jeff opened his blue eyes on his tormentor. Could

Aunt Sally have been saying anything?

“If anybody, Miss Mayfield―” he began.

“Nobody but you. Look here!”

She extended her little hand with a smile. In the

centre of her palm lay four shining double B SHOT.

“There! I found those in my slipper this morning!”

Jeff was speechless.

“Of course YOU did it! Of course it was YOU who

found my slipper!” said Miss Mayfield, laughing. “But why

did you put shot in it, Mr. Jeff? In some Catholic countries,

when people have done wrong, the priests make them do

penance by walking with peas in their shoes! What have I

ever done to you? And why SHOT? They’re ever so much

harder than peas.”

Seeing only the mischievous, laughing face before

him, and the open palm containing the damning evidence of

the broken Eley’s cartridge, Jeff stammered out the truth.

“I found the slipper in the bear-skin, Miss Mayfield.

I put it in my trunk to keep, thinking yer wouldn’t miss it,

and it’s being a kind of remembrance after you’re gone

63

away―of―of the night you came here. Somebody moved

the trunk in my room,” and he hung his head here. “The

things inside all got mixed up.”

“And that made you change your mind about keeping

it?” said Miss Mayfield, still smiling.

“No, miss.”

“What was it, then?”

“I gave it back to you, Miss Mayfield, because I was

going away.”

“Indeed! Where?”

“I’m going to find another location. Maybe you’ve

noticed,” he continued, falling back into his old apologetic

manner in spite of his pride of resolution―“maybe you’ve

noticed that this place here has no advantages for a hotel.”

“I had not, indeed. I have been very comfortable.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“When do you go?”

“To-night.”

For all his pride and fixed purpose he could not help

looking eagerly in her face. Miss Mayfield’s eyes met his

pleasantly and quietly.

“I’m sorry to part with you so soon,” she said, as she

stepped back a pace or two with folded hands. “Of course

64

every moment of your time now is occupied. You must not

think of wasting it on me.”

But Jeff had recovered his sad composure. “I’d like

to go with you, Miss Mayfield. It’s the last time, you know,”

he added simply.

Miss Mayfield did not reply. It was a tacit assent,

however, although she moved somewhat stiffly at his side as

they walked towards the door. Quite convinced that Jeff’s

resolution came from his pecuniary troubles, Miss Mayfield

was wondering if she had not better assure him of his

security from further annoyance from Dodd. Wonderful

complexity of female intellect! she was a little hurt at his

ingratitude to her for a kindness he could not possibly have

known. Miss Mayfield felt that in some way she was unjustly

treated. How many of our miserable sex, incapable of

divination, have been crushed under that unreasonable

feminine reproof, “You ought to have known!”

The afternoon sun was indeed shining brightly as

they stepped out before the bleak angle of the “Half-way

House”; but it failed to mitigate the habitually practical

austerity of the mountain breeze―a fact which Miss

Mayfield had never before noticed. The house was certainly

bleak and exposed; the site by no means a poetical one. She

wondered if she had not put a romance into it, and perhaps

even into the man beside her, which did not belong to either.

It was a moment of dangerous doubt.

“I don’t know but that you’re right, Mr. Jeff,” she

said finally, as they faced the hill, and began the ascent

together. “This place is a little queer, and bleak,

and―unattractive.”

65

“Yes, miss,” said Jeff, with direct simplicity, “I’ve

always wondered what you saw in it to make you content to

stay, when it would be so much prettier, and more suitable

for you at the ‘Summit.’”

Miss Mayfield bit her lip, and was silent. After a few

moments’ climbing she said, almost pettishly, “Where is this

famous ‘Summit’?”

Jeff stopped. They had reached the top of the hill. He

pointed across an olive-green chasm to a higher level, where,

basking in the declining sun, clustered the long rambling

outbuildings around the white blinking facade of the

“Summit House.” Framed in pines and hemlocks, tender

with soft gray shadows, and nestling beyond a foreground of

cultivated slope, it was a charming rustic picture.

Miss Mayfield’s quick eye took in its details. Her

quick intellect took in something else. She had seated herself

on the road-bank, and, clasping her knees between her

locked fingers, she suddenly looked up at Jeff. “What

possessed you to come half-way up a mountain, instead of

going on to the top?”

“Poverty, miss!”

Miss Mayfield flushed a little at this practical direct

answer to her half-figurative question. However, she began

to think that moral Alpine-climbing youth might have

pecuniary restrictions in their high ambitions, and that the

hero of “Excelsior” might have succumbed to more powerful

opposition than the wisdom of Age or the blandishments of

Beauty.

“You mean that poverty up there is more expensive?”

66

“Yes, miss.”

“But you would like to live there?”

“Yes.”

They were both silent. Miss Mayfield glanced at Jeff

under the corners of her lashes. He was leaning against a tree,

absorbed in thought. Accustomed to look upon him as a

pleasing picturesque object, quite fresh, original, and

characteristic, she was somewhat disturbed to find that to-

day he presented certain other qualities which clearly did not

agree with her preconceived ideas of his condition. He had

abandoned his usual large top-boots for low shoes, and she

could not help noticing that his feet were small and slender

as were his hands, albeit browned by exposure. His ruddy

color was gone too, and his face, pale with sorrow and

experience, had a new expression. His buttoned-up coat and

white collar, so unlike his usual self, also had its

suggestions―which Miss Mayfield was at first inclined to

resent. Women are quick to notice and augur more or less

wisely from these small details. Nevertheless, she began in

quite another tone.

“Do you remember your

mother―MR.―MR.―BRIGGS?”

Jeff noticed the new epithet. “No, miss; she died

when I was quite young.”

“Your father, then?”

Jeff’s eye kindled a little, aggressively. “I remember

HIM.”

“What was he?”

67

“Miss Mayfield!”

“What was his business or profession?”

“He―hadn’t―any!”

“Oh, I see―a gentleman of property.”

Jeff hesitated, looked at Miss Mayfield hurriedly,

colored, and did not reply.

“And lost his property, Mr. Briggs?” With one of

those rare impulses of an overtasked gentle nature, Jeff

turned upon her almost savagely. “My father was a gambler,

and shot himself at a gambling table.”

Miss Mayfield rose hurriedly. “I―I beg your pardon,

Mr. Jeff.”

Jeff was silent.

“You know―you MUST know―I did not mean―”

No reply.

“Mr. Jeff!”

Her little hand fluttered toward him, and lit upon his

sleeve, where it was suddenly captured and pressed

passionately to his lips.

“I did not mean to be thoughtless or unkind,” said

Miss Mayfield, discreetly keeping to the point, and trying

weakly to disengage her hand. “You know I wouldn’t hurt

your feelings.”

68

“I know, Miss Mayfield.” (Another kiss.)

“I was ignorant of your history.”

“Yes, miss.” (A kiss.)

“And if I could do anything for you, Mr. Jeff―” She

stopped.

It was a very trying position. Being small, she was

drawn after her hand quite up to Jeff’s shoulder, while he,

assenting in monosyllables, was parting the fingers, and

kissing them separately. Reasonable discourse in this

attitude was out of the question. She had recourse to strategy.

“Oh!”

“Miss Mayfield!”

“You hurt my hand.”

Jeff dropped it instantly. Miss Mayfield put it in the

pocket of her sacque for security. Besides, it had been so

bekissed that it seemed unpleasantly conscious.

“I wish you would tell me all about yourself,” she

went on, with a certain charming feminine submission of

manner quite unlike her ordinary speech; “I should like to

help you. Perhaps I can. You know I am quite independent;

I mean―”

She paused, for Jeff’s face betrayed no signs of

sympathetic following.

“I mean I am what people call rich in my own right.

I can do as I please with my own. If any of your trouble, Mr.

69

Jeff, arises from want of money, or capital; if any

consideration of that kind takes you away from your home;

if I could save you THAT TROUBLE, and find for

you―perhaps a little nearer―that which you are seeking, I

would be so glad to do it. You will find the world very wide,

and very cold, Mr. Jeff,” she continued, with a certain air of

practical superiority quite natural to her, but explicable to her

friends and acquaintances only as the consciousness of

pecuniary independence; “and I wish you would be frank

with me. Although I am a woman, I know something of

business.”

“I will be frank with you, miss,” said Jeff, turning a

colorless face upon her. “If you was ez rich as the Bank of

California, and could throw your money on any fancy or

whim that struck you at the moment; if you felt you could

buy up any man and woman in California that was willing to

be bought up; and if me and my aunt were starving in the

road, we wouldn’t touch the money that we hadn’t earned

fairly, and didn’t belong to us. No, miss, I ain’t that sort o’

man!”

How much of this speech, in its brusqueness and

slang, was an echo of Yuba Bill’s teaching, how much of it

was a part of Jeff’s inward weakness, I cannot say. He saw

Miss Mayfield recoil from him. It added to his bitterness that

his thought, for the first time voiced, appeared to him by no

means as effective or powerful as he had imagined it would

be, but he could not recede from it; and there was the relief

that the worst had come, and was over now.

Miss Mayfield took her hand out of her pocket. “I

don’t think you quite understand me, Mr. Jeff,” she said

quietly; “and I HOPE I don’t understand you.” She walked

stiffly at his side for a few moments, but finally took the

70

other side of the road. They had both turned, half

unconsciously, back again to the “Half-way House.”

Jeff felt, like all quarrel-seekers, righteous or

unrighteous, the full burden of the fight. If he could have

relieved his mind, and at the next moment leaped upon Yuba

Bill’s coach, and so passed away―without a further word of

explanation―all would have been well. But to walk back

with this girl, whom he had just shaken off, and who must

now thoroughly hate him, was something he had not

preconceived, in that delightful forecast of the imagination,

when we determine what WE shall say and do without the

least consideration of what may be said or done to us in

return. No quarrel proceeds exactly as we expect; people

have such a way of behaving illogically! And here was Miss

Mayfield, who was clearly derelict, and who should have

acted under that conviction, walking along on the other side

of the road, trailing the splendor of her parasol in the dust

like an offended goddess.

They had almost reached the house. “At what time

do you go, Mr. Briggs?” asked the young lady quietly.

“At eleven to-night, by the up stage.”

“I expect some friends by that stage―coming with

my father.”

“My aunt will take good care of them,” said Jeff, a

little bitterly.

“I have no doubt,” responded Miss Mayfield gravely;

“but I was not thinking of that. I had hoped to introduce them

to you to-morrow. But I shall not be up so late to-night. And

I had better say good-by to you now.”

71

She extended the unkissed hand. Jeff took it, but

presently let the limp fingers fall through his own.

“I wish you good fortune, Mr. Briggs.”

She made a grave little bow, and vanished into the

house. But here, I regret to say, her lady-like calm also

vanished. She upbraided her mother peevishly for obliging

her to seek the escort of Mr. Briggs in her necessary exercise,

and flung herself with an injured air upon the sofa.

“But I thought you liked this Mr. Briggs. He seems

an accommodating sort of person.”

“Very accommodating. Going away just as we are

expecting company!”

“Going away?” said Mrs. Mayfield in alarm. “Surely

he must be told that we expect some preparation for our

friends?”

“Oh,” said Miss Mayfield quickly, “his aunt will

arrange THAT.”

Mrs. Mayfield, habitually mystified at her daughter’s

moods, said no more. She, however, fulfilled her duty

conscientiously by rising, throwing a wrap over the young

girl, tucking it in at her feet, and having, as it were, drawn a

charitable veil over her peculiarities, left her alone.

At half past ten the coach dashed up to the “Half-way

House,” with a flash of lights and a burst of cheery voices.

Jeff, coming upon the porch, was met by Mr. Mayfield,

accompanying a lady and two gentlemen―evidently the

guests alluded to by his daughter. Accustomed as Jeff had

become to Mr. Mayfield’s patronizing superiority, it seemed

72

unbearable now, and the easy indifference of the guests to

his own presence touched him with a new bitterness. Here

were HER friends, who were to take his place. It was a relief

to grasp Yuba Bill’s large hand and stand with him alone

beside the bar.

“I’m ready to go with you to-night, Bill,” said Jeff,

after a pause.

Bill put down his glass―a sign of absorbing interest.

“And these yar strangers I fetched?”

“Aunty will take care of them. I’ve fixed

everything.”

Bill laid both his powerful hands on Jeff’s shoulders,

backed him against the wall, and surveyed him with great

gravity.

“Briggs’ son clar through! A little off color, but the

grit all thar! Bully for you, Jeff.” He wrung Jeff’s hand

between his own.

“Bill!” said Jeff hesitatingly.

“Jeff!”

“You wouldn’t mind my getting up on the box NOW,

before all the folks get round?”

“I reckon not. Thar’s the box-seat all ready for ye.”

Climbing to his high perch, Jeff, indistinguishable in

the darkness, looked out upon the porch and the moving

figures of the passengers, on Bill growling out his orders to

73

his active hostler, and on the twinkling lights of the hotel

windows. In the mystery of the night and the bitterness of his

heart, everything looked strange. There was a light in Miss

Mayfield’s room, but the curtains were drawn. Once he

thought they moved, but then, fearful of the fascination of

watching them, he turned his face resolutely away.

Then, to his relief, the hour came; the passengers re-

entered the coach; Bill had mounted the box, and was slowly

gathering his reins, when a shrill voice rose from the porch.

“Oh, Jeff!”

Jeff leaned an anxious face out over the coach lamps.

It was Aunt Sally, breathless and on tiptoe, reaching

with a letter. “Suthin’ you forgot!” Then, in a hoarse stage

whisper, perfectly audible to every one: “From HER!”

Jeff seized the letter with a burning face. The whip

snapped, and the stage plunged forward into the darkness.

Presently Yuba Bill reached down, coolly detached one of

the coach lamps, and handed it to Jeff without a word.

Jeff tore open the envelope. It contained Cyrus

Parker’s bill receipted, and the writ. Another small inclosure

contained ten dollars, and a few lines written in pencil in a

large masculine business hand. By the light of the lamp Jeff

read as follows:

I hope you will forgive me for having tried to help

you even in this accidental way, before I knew how

strong were your objections to help from me.

Nobody knows this but myself. Even Mr. Dodd

74

thinks my father advanced the money. The ten

dollars the rascal would have kept, but I made him

disgorge it. I did it all while you were looking for

the letter in the woods. Pray forget all about it, and

any pain you may have had from J. M.

Frank and practical as this letter appeared to be, and,

doubtless, as it was intended to be by its writer, the reader

will not fail to notice that Miss Mayfield said nothing of

having overheard Jeff’s quarrel with the deputy, and left him

to infer that that functionary had betrayed him. It was simply

one of those unpleasant details not affecting the result,

usually overlooked in feminine ethics.

For a moment Jeff sat pale and dumb, crushed under

the ruins of his pride and self-love. For a moment he hated

Miss Mayfield, small and triumphant! How she must have

inwardly laughed at his speech that morning! With what

refined cruelty she had saved this evidence of his

humiliation, to work her vengeance on him now. He could

not stand it! He could not live under it! He would go back

and sell the house―his clothes―everything―to pay this

wicked, heartless, cruel girl, that was killing―yes, killing―

A strong hand took the swinging-lantern from his

unsteady fingers, a strong hand possessed itself of the papers

and Miss Mayfield’s note, a strong arm was drawn around

him―for his figure was swaying to and fro, his head was

giddy, and his hat had fallen off―and a strong voice, albeit

a little husky, whispered in his ear―

“Easy, boy! easy on the down grade. It’ll be all one

in a minit.”

75

Jeff tried to comprehend him, but his brain was

whirling.

“Pull yourself together, Jeff!” said Bill, after a pause.

“Thar! Look yar!” he said suddenly. “Do you think you can

drive SIX?”

The words recalled Jeff to his senses. Bill laid the six

reins in his hands. A sense of life, of activity, of POWER,

came back to the young man, as his fingers closed

deliciously on the far-reaching, thrilling, living leathern

sinews that controlled the six horses, and seemed to be

instinct and magnetic with their bounding life. Jeff, leaning

back against them, felt the strong youthful tide rush back to

his heart, and was himself again. Bill, meantime, took the

lamp, examined the papers, and read Miss Mayfield’s note.

A grim smile stole over his face. After a pause, he said again,

“Give Blue Grass her head, Jeff. D―n it, she ain’t Miss

Mayfield!”

Jeff relaxed the muscles of his wrists, so as to throw

the thumb and forefingers a trifle forward. This simple action

relieved Blue Grass, alias Miss Mayfield, and made the

coach steadier and less jerky. Wonderful co-relation of

forces.

“Thar!” said Yuba Bill, quietly putting the coach

lamp back in its place; “you’re better already. Thar’s nothing

like six horses to draw a woman out of a man. I’ve knowed

a case where it took eight mustangs, but it was a mulatter

from New Orleans, and they are pizen! Ye might hit up a

little on the Pinto hoss―he ain’t harmin’ ye. So! Now, Jeff,

take your time, and take it easy, and what’s all this yer

about?”

76

To control six fiery mustangs, and at the same time

give picturesque and affecting exposition of the subtle

struggles of Love and Pride, was a performance beyond

Jeff’s powers. He had recourse to an angry staccato, which

somehow seemed to him as ineffective as his previous

discourse to Miss Mayfield; he was a little incoherent, and

perhaps mixed his impressions with his facts, but he

nevertheless managed to convey to Bill some general idea of

the events of the past three days.

“And she sent ye off after that letter, that wasn’t thar,

while she fixed things up with Dodd?”

“Yes,” said Jeff furiously.

“Ye needn’t bully the Pinto colt, Jeff; he is doin’ his

level best. And she snaked that ar ten dollars outer Dodd?”

“Yes; and sent it back to ME. To ME, Bill! At such

a time as this! As if I was dead broke!―a mere tramp. As

if―”

“In course! in course!” said Bill soothingly, yet

turning his head aside to bestow a deceitful smile upon the

trees that whirled beside them. “And ye told her ye didn’t

want her money?”

“Yes, Bill―but it―it―it was AFTER she had done

this!”

“Surely! I’ll take the lines now, Jeff.”

He took them. Jeff relapsed into gloomy silence. The

starlight of that dewless Sierran night was bright and cold

and passionless. There was no moon to lead the fancy astray

with its faint mysteries and suggestions; nothing but a clear,

77

grayish-blue twilight, with sharply silhouetted shadows,

pointed here and there with bright large-spaced constant

stars. The deep breath of the pine-woods, the faint, cool

resinous spices of bay and laurel, at last brought surcease to

his wounded spirit. The blessed weariness of exhausted

youth stole tenderly on him. His head nodded, dropped.

Yuba Bill, with a grim smile, drew him to his side, enveloped

him in his blanket, and felt his head at last sink upon his own

broad shoulder.

A few minutes later the coach drew up at the

“Summit House.” Yuba Bill did not dismount, an unusual

and disturbing circumstance that brought the bar-keeper to

the veranda.

“What’s up, old man?”

“I am.”

“Sworn off your reg’lar pizen?”

“My physician,” said Bill gravely, “hez ordered me

dry champagne every three hours.”

Nevertheless, the bar-keeper lingered.

“Who’s that you’re dry-nussin’ up there?”

I regret that I may not give Yuba Bill’s literal reply.

It suggested a form of inquiry at once distant, indirect,

outrageous, and impossible.

The bar-keeper flashed a lantern upon Jeff’s curls

and his drooping eyelashes and mustaches.

78

“It’s that son o’ Briggs o’ Tuolumne―pooty boy,

ain’t he?”

Bill disdained a reply.

“Played himself out down there, I reckon. Left his

rifle here in pawn.”

“Young man,” said Bill gravely.

“Old man.”

“Ef you’re looking for a safe investment ez will pay

ye better than forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you

hang onter that ar rifle. It may make your fortin yet, or save

ye from a drunkard’s grave.” With this ungracious

pleasantry he hurried his dilatory passengers back into the

coach, cracked his whip, and was again upon the road. The

lights of the “Summit House” presently dropped here and

there into the wasting shadows of the trees. Another stretch

through the close-set ranks of pines, another dash through

the opening, another whirl and rattle by overhanging rocks,

and the vehicle was swiftly descending. Bill put his foot on

the brake, threw his reins loosely on the necks of his cattle,

and looked leisurely back. The great mountain was slowly

and steadily rising between them and the valley they quitted.

And at that same moment Miss Mayfield had crept

from her bed, and, with a shawl around her pretty little

figure, was pressing her eyes against a blank window of the

“Half-way House,” and wondering where HE was now.

79

Chapter 5

The “opening” suggested by Bill was not a fortunate

one. Possibly views of business openings in the public-house

line taken from the tops of stage-coaches are not as judicious

as those taken from less exalted levels. Certain it is that the

“goodwill” of the “Lone Star House” promised little more

pecuniary value than a conventional blessing. It was in an

older and more thickly settled locality than the “Half-way

House;” indeed, it was but half a mile away from Campville,

famous in ‘49―a place with a history and a disaster. But

young communities are impatient of settlements that through

any accident fail to fulfil the extravagant promise of their

youth, and the wounded hamlet of Campville had crept into

the woods and died. The “Lone Star House” was an attempt

to woo the passing travelers from another point; but its road

led to Campville, and was already touched by its dry-rot.

Bill, who honestly conceived that the infusion of fresh young

blood like Jeff’s into the stagnant current would quicken it,

had to confess his disappointment. “I thought ye could put

some go into the shanty, Jeff,” said Bill, “and make it lively

and invitin’!” But the lack of vitality was not in the landlord,

but in the guests. The regular customers were disappointed,

vacant, hopeless men, who gathered listlessly on the

veranda, and talked vaguely of the past. Their hollow-eyed,

feeble impotency affected the stranger, even as it checked all

ambition among themselves. Do what Jeff might, the habits

of the locality were stronger than his individuality; the dead

ghosts of the past Campville held their property by invisible

mortmain.

80

In the midst of this struggle the “Half-way House”

was sold. Spite of Bill’s prediction, the proceeds barely paid

Jeff’s debts. Aunt Sally prevented any troublesome

consideration of HER future, by applying a small surplus of

profit to the expenses of a journey back to her relatives in

Kentucky. She wrote Jeff a letter of cheerless instruction,

reminded him of the fulfillment of her worst prophecies

regarding him, but begged him, in her absence, to rely solely

upon the “Word.” “For the sperrit killeth,” she added

vaguely. Whether this referred figuratively to Jeff’s

business, he did not stop to consider. He was more interested

in the information that the Mayfields had removed to the

“Summit Hotel” two days after he had left. “She allowed it

was for her health’s sake,” continued Aunt Sally, “but I

reckon it’s another name for one of them city fellers who

j’ined their party and is keepin’ company with her now. They

talk o’ property and stocks and sich worldly trifles all the

time, and it’s easy to see their idees is set together. It’s

allowed at the Forks that Mr. Mayfield paid Parker’s bill for

you. I said it wasn’t so, fur ye’d hev told me; but if it is so,

Jeff, and ye didn’t tell me, it was for only one puppos, and

that wos that Mayfield bribed ye to break off with his darter!

That was WHY you went off so suddent, ‘like a thief in the

night,’ and why Miss Mayfield never let on a word about you

after you left―not even your name!”

Jeff crushed the letter between his fingers, and, going

behind the bar, poured out half a glass of stimulant and drank

it. It was not the first time since he came to the “Lone Star

House” that he had found this easy relief from his present

thought; it was not the first time that he had found this

dangerous ally of sure and swift service in bringing him up

or down to that level of his dreary, sodden guests, so

necessary to his trade. Jeff had not the excuse of the inborn

drunkard’s taste. He was impulsive and extreme. At the end

of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as Bill

81

drew up. “You must take me from this place to-night,” he

said, in a broken voice scarce like his own. “When we’re on

the road we can arrange matters, but I must go to-night.”

“But where?” asked Bill.

“Anywhere! Only I must go from here. I shall go if I

have to walk.”

Bill looked hard at the young man. His face was

flushed, his eyes blood-shot, and his hands trembled, not

with excitement, but with a vacant, purposeless impotence.

Bill looked a little relieved. “You’ve been drinking too hard.

Jeff, I thought better of ye than that!”

“I think better of MYSELF than that,” said Jeff, with

a certain wild, half-hysterical laugh, “and that is why I want

to go. Don’t be alarmed, Bill,” he added; “I have strength

enough to save myself, and I shall! But it isn’t worth the

struggle HERE.”

He left the “Lone Star House” that night. He would,

he said to Bill, go on to Sacramento, and try to get a situation

as clerk or porter there; he was too old to learn a trade. He

said little more. When, after forty-eight hours’ inability to

eat, drink, or sleep, Bill, looking at his haggard face and

staring eyes, pressed him to partake, medicinally, from a

certain black bottle, Jeff gently put it aside, and saying, with

a sad smile, “I can get along without it; I’ve gone through

more than this,” left his mentor in a state of mingled

admiration and perplexity.

At Sacramento he found a commercial “opening.”

But certain habits of personal independence, combined with

a direct truthfulness and simplicity, were not conducive to

business advancement. He was frank, and in his habits

82

impulsive and selfishly outspoken. His employer, a good-

natured man, successful in his way, anxious to serve his own

interest and Jeff’s equally, strove and labored with him, but

in vain. His employer’s wife, a still more good-natured

woman, successful in her way, and equally anxious to serve

Jeff’s interests and her own, also strove with him as

unsuccessfully. At the end of a month he discharged his

employer, after a simple, boyish, utterly unbusiness-like

interview, and secretly tore up his wife’s letter. “I don’t

know what to make of that chap,” said the husband to his

wife; “he’s about as civilized as an Injun.” “And as

conceited,” added the lady.

Howbeit he took his conceit, his sorrows, his curls,

mustaches, broad shoulders, and fifty dollars into humble

lodgings in a back street. The days succeeding this were the

most restful he had passed since he left the “Half-way

House.” To wander through the town, half conscious of its

strangeness and novel bustling life, and to dream of a higher

and nobler future with Miss Mayfield―to feel no

responsibility but that of waiting―was, I regret to say, a

pleasure to him. He made no acquaintances except among

the poorer people and the children. He was sometimes

hungry, he was always poorly clad, but these facts carried no

degradation with them now. He read much, and in his

way―Jeff’s way―tried to improve his mind; his recent

commercial experience had shown him various infelicities in

his speech and accent. He learned to correct certain

provincialisms. He was conscious that Miss Mayfield must

have noticed them, yet his odd irrational pride kept him from

ever regretting them, if they had offered a possible excuse

for her treatment of him.

On one of these nights his steps chanced to lead him

into a gambling-saloon. The place had offered no temptation

to him; his dealings with the goddess Chance had been of

83

less active nature. Nevertheless he placed his last five dollars

on the turn of a card. He won. He won repeatedly; his gains

had reached a considerable sum when, flushed, excited, and

absorbed, he was suddenly conscious that he had become the

centre of observation at the table. Looking up, he saw that

the dealer had paused, and, with the cards in his motionless

fingers, was gazing at him with fixed eyes and a white face.

Jeff rose and passed hurriedly to his side. “What’s

the matter?”

The gambler shrunk slightly as he approached.

“What’s your name?”

“Briggs.”

“God! I knew it! How much have you got there?” he

continued, in a quick whisper, pointing to Jeff’s winnings.

“Five hundred dollars.”

“I’ll give you double if you’ll get up and quit the

board!”

“Why?” asked Jeff haughtily.

“Why?” repeated the man fiercely; “why? Well, your

father shot himself thar, where you’re sittin’, at this table;”

and he added, with a half-forced, half-hysterical laugh,

“HE’S PLAYIN’ AT ME OVER YOUR SHOULDERS!”

Jeff lifted a face as colorless as the gambler’s own,

went back to his seat, and placed his entire gains on a single

card. The gambler looked at him nervously, but dealt. There

was a pause, a slight movement where Jeff stood, and then a

simultaneous cry from the players as they turned towards

84

him. But his seat was vacant. “Run after him! Call him back!

HE’S WON AGAIN!” But he had vanished utterly.

HOW he left, or what indeed followed, he never

clearly remembered. His movements must have been

automatic, for when, two hours later, he found himself at the

“Pioneer” coach office, with his carpet-bag and blankets by

his side, he could not recall how or why he had come! He

had a dumb impression that he had barely escaped some dire

calamity―rather that he had only temporarily averted

it―and that he was still in the shadow of some impending

catastrophe of destiny. He must go somewhere, he must do

something to be saved! He had no money, he had no friends;

even Yuba Bill had been transferred to another route, miles

away. Yet, in the midst of this stupefaction, it was a part of

his strange mental condition that trivial details of Miss

Mayfield’s face and figure, and even apparel, were

constantly before him, to the exclusion of consecutive

thought. A collar she used to wear, a ribbon she had once

tied around her waist, a blue vein in her dropped eyelid, a

curve in her soft, full, bird-like throat, the arch of her in-step

in her small boots―all these were plainer to him than the

future, or even the present. But a voice in his ear, a figure

before his abstracted eyes, at last broke upon his reverie.

“Jeff Briggs!”

Jeff mechanically took the outstretched hand of a

young clerk of the Pioneer Coach Company, who had once

accompanied Yuba Bill and stopped at the “Half-way

House.” He endeavored to collect his thoughts; here seemed

to be an opportunity to go somewhere!

“What are you doing now?” said the young man

briskly.

85

“Nothing,” said Jeff simply.

“Oh, I see―going home!”

Home! the word stung sharply through Jeff’s

benumbed consciousness.

“No,” he stammered, “that is―”

“Look here, Jeff,” broke in the young man, “I’ve got

a chance for you that don’t fall in a man’s way every day.

Wells, Fargo & Company’s treasure messenger from

Robinson’s Ferry to Mempheys has slipped out. The place is

vacant. I reckon I can get it for you.”

“When?”

“Now―to-night.”

“I’m ready.”

“Come, then.”

In ten minutes they were in the company’s office,

where its manager, a man famous in those days for his

boldness and shrewdness, still lingered in the dispatch of

business.

The young clerk briefly but deferentially stated

certain facts. A few questions and answers followed, of

which Jeff heard only the words “Tuolumne” and “Yuba

Bill.”

“Sit down, Mr. Briggs. Good-night, Roberts.”

86

The young clerk, with an encouraging smile at Jeff,

bowed himself out as the manager seated himself at his desk

and began to write.

“You know the country pretty well between the Fork

and the Summit, Mr. Briggs?” he said, without looking up.

“I lived there,” said Jeff.

“That was some months ago, wasn’t it?”

“Six months,” said Jeff, with a sigh.

“It’s changed for the worse since your house was

shut up. There’s a long stretch of unsettled country infested

by bad characters.”

Jeff sat silent. “Briggs.”

“Sir?”

“The last man but one who preceded you was shot by

road agents.”1

“Yes, sir.”

“We lost sixty thousand dollars up there.”

“Yes?”

“Your father was Briggs of Tuolumne?”

“Yes, sir.” Jeff’s head dropped, but, glancing shyly

up, he saw a pleasant smile on his questioner’s face. He was

1 Highway robbers.

87

still writing rapidly, but was apparently enjoying at the same

time some pleasant recollection.

“Your father and I lost nearly sixty thousand dollars

together one night, ten years ago, when we were both

younger.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jeff dubiously.

“But it was OUR OWN MONEY, Jeff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here’s your appointment,” he said briefly, throwing

away his pen, folding what he had written, and handing it to

Jeff. It was the first time that he had looked at him since he

entered. He now held out his hand, grasped Jeff’s, and said,

“Good-night!”

88

89

Chapter 6

It was late the next evening when Jeff drew up at the

coach office at Robinson’s Ferry, where he was to await the

coming of the Summit coach. His mind, lifted only

temporarily out of its denumbed condition during his

interview with the manager, again fell back into its dull

abstraction. Fully embarked upon his dangerous journey,

accepting all the meaning of the trust imposed upon him, he

was yet vaguely conscious that he did not realize its full

importance. He had neither the dread nor the stimulation of

coming danger. He had faced death before in the boyish

confidence of animal spirits; his pulse now was scarcely

stirred with anticipation. Once or twice before, in the

extravagance of his passion, he had imagined himself

rescuing Miss Mayfield from danger, or even dying for her.

During his journey his mind had dwelt fully and minutely on

every detail of their brief acquaintance; she was continually

before him, the tones of her voice were in his ears, the

suggestive touch of her fingers, the thrill that his lips had felt

when he kissed them―all were with him now, but only as a

memory. In his coming fate, in his future life, he saw her not.

He believed it was a premonition of coming death.

He made a few preparations. The company’s agent

had told him that the treasure, letters, and dispatches, which

had accumulated to a considerable amount, would be handed

to him on the box; and that the arms and ammunition were

in the boot. A less courageous and determined man might

have been affected by the cold, practical brutality of certain

advice and instructions offered him by the agent, but Jeff

recognized this compliment to his determination, even

90

before the agent concluded his speech by saying, “But I

reckon they knew what they were about in the lower office

when they sent YOU up. I dare say you kin give me p’ints,

ef ye cared to, for all ye’re soft spoken. There are only four

passengers booked through; we hev to be a little partikler,

suspectin’ spies! Two of the four ye kin depend upon to get

the top o’ their d――d heads blowed off the first fire,” he

added grimly.

At ten o’clock the Summit coach flashed, rattled,

glittered, and snapped, like a disorganized firework, up to

the door of the company’s office. A familiar figure, but more

than usually truculent and aggressive, slowly descended

with violent oaths from the box. Without seeing Jeff, it

strode into the office.

“Now then,” said Yuba Bill, addressing the agent,

“whar’s that God-forsaken fool that Wells, Fargo &

Company hev sent up yar to take charge o’ their treasure?

Because I’d like to introduce him to the champion idgit of

Calaveras County, that’s been selected to go to h-ll with him;

and that’s me, Yuba Bill! P’int him out. Don’t keep me

waitin’!”

The agent grinned and pointed to Jeff.

Both men recoiled in astonishment. Yuba Bill was

the first to recover his speech.

“It’s a lie!” he roared; “or somebody has been putting

up a job on ye, Jeff! Because I’ve been twenty years in the

service, and am such a nat’ral born mule that when the

company strokes my back and sez, ‘You’re the on’y mule

we kin trust, Bill,’ I starts up and goes out as a blasted

wooden figgerhead for road agents to lay fur and practice on,

it don’t follow that YOU’VE any call to go.”

91

“It was my own seeking, Bill,” said Jeff, with one of

his old, sweet, boyish smiles. “I didn’t know YOU were to

drive. But you’re not going back on me now, Bill, are you?

you’re not going to send me off with another volunteer?”

“That be d――d!” growled Bill. Nevertheless, for

ten minutes he reviled the Pioneer Coach Company with

picturesque imprecation, tendered his resignation repeatedly

to the agent, and at the end of that time, as everybody

expected, mounted the box, and with a final malediction,

involving the whole settlement, was off.

On the road, Jeff, in a few hurried sentences, told his

story. Bill scarcely seemed to listen. “Look yar, Jeff,” he said

suddenly.

“Yes, Bill.”

“If the worst happens, and ye go under, you’ll tell

your father, IF I DON’T HAPPEN TO SEE HIM FIRST, it

wasn’t no job of mine, and I did my best to get ye out of it.”

“Yes,” said Jeff, in a faint voice.

“It mayn’t be so bad,” said Bill, softening; “they

KNOW, d―n ‘em, we’ve got a pile aboard, ez well as if they

seed that agent gin it ye, but they also know we’ve pre-

pared!”

“I wasn’t thinking of that, Bill; I was thinking of my

father.” And he told Bill of the gambling episode at

Sacramento.

“D’ye mean to say ye left them hounds with a

thousand dollars of yer hard-earned―”

92

“Gambling gains, Bill,” interrupted Jeff quietly.

“Exactly! Well!” Bill subsided into an incoherent

growl. After a few moments’ pause, he began again. “Yer

ready as ye used to be with a six-shooter, Jeff, time’s when

ye was a boy, and I uster chuck half-dollars in the air fur ye

to make warts on?”

“I reckon,” said Jeff, with a faint smile.

“Thar’s two p’ints on the road to be looked to: the

woods beyond the blacksmith’s shop that uster be; the fringe

of alder and buckeye by the crossing below your

house―p’ints where they kin fetch you without a show.

Thar’s two ways o’ meetin’ them thar. One way ez to pull up

and trust to luck and brag. The other way is to whip up and

yell, and send the whole six kiting by like h-ll!”

“Yes,” said Jeff.

“The only drawback to that plan is this: the road lies

along the edge of a precipice, straight down a thousand feet

into the river. Ef these devils get a shot into any one o’ the

six and it DROPS, the coach turns sharp off, and down we

go, the whole kerboodle of us, plump into the Stanislaus!”

“AND THEY DON’T GET THE MONEY,” said

Jeff quietly.

“Well, no!” replied Yuba Bill, staring at Jeff, whose

face was set as a flint against the darkness. “I should reckon

not.” He then drew a long breath, glanced at Jeff again, and

said between his teeth, “Well, I’m d――d!”

At the next station they changed horses, Bill

personally supervising, especially as regarded the welfare

93

and proper condition of Blue Grass, who here was brought

out as a leader. Formerly there was no change of horses at

this station, and this novelty excited Jeff’s remark. “These

yar chaps say thar’s no station at the Summit now,” growled

Bill, in explanation; “the hotel is closed, and it’s all private

property, bought by some chap from ‘Frisco. Thar ought to

be a law agin such doin’s!”

This suggested obliteration of the last traces of Miss

Mayfield seemed to Jeff as only a corroboration of his

premonition. He should never hear from her again! Yet to

have stood under the roof that last sheltered her; to,

perchance, have met some one who had seen her later―this

was a fancy that had haunted him on his journey. It was all

over now. Perhaps it was for the best.

With the sinking behind of the lights of the station,

the occupants of the coach knew that the dangerous part of

the journey had begun. The two guards in the coach had

already made obtrusive and warlike preparations, to the ill-

concealed disgust of Yuba Bill. “I’d hev been willin’ to get

through this yar job without the burnin’ of powder, but ef

any of them devils ez is waitin’ for us would be content with

a shot at them fancy policemen inside, I’d pull up and give

‘em a show!” Having relieved his mind, Bill said no more,

and the two men relapsed into silence. The moon shone

brightly and peacefully, a fact pointed out by Bill as

unfavorably deepening the shadows of the woods, and

bringing the coach and the road into greater relief.

An hour passed. What were Yuba Bill’s thoughts are

not a part of this history; that they were turbulent and

aggressive might be inferred from the occasional growls and

interjected oaths that broke from his lips. But Jeff, strange

anomaly, due perhaps to youth and moonlight, was wrapped

in a sensuous dream of Miss Mayfield, of the scent of her

94

dark hair as he had drawn her to his side, of the outlines of

her sweet form, that had for a moment lightly touched his

own―of anything, I fear, but the death he believed he was

hastening to. But―

“Jeff,” said Bill, in an unmistakable tone.

“Yes,” said Jeff.

“THAT AR CLUMP O’ BUCKEYE ON THE

RIDGE! Ready there!” (Leaning over the box, to the guards

within.) A responsive rustle in the coach, which now

bounded forward as if instinct with life and intelligence.

“Jeff,” said Bill, in an odd, altered voice, “take the

lines a minit.” Jeff took them. Bill stooped towards the boot.

A peaceful moment! A peaceful outlook from the coach; the

white moonlit road stretching to the ridge, no noise but the

steady gallop of the horses!

Then a yellow flash, breaking from the darkness of

the buckeye; a crack like the snap of a whip; Yuba Bill

steadying himself for a moment, and then dropping at Jeff’s

feet!

“They got me, Jeff! But―I DRAWED THEIR

FIRE! Don’t drop the lines! Don’t speak! For―they―think

I’m YOU and you ME!”

The flash had illuminated Jeff as to the danger, as to

Bill’s sacrifice, but above all, and overwhelming all, to a

thrilling sense of his own power and ability.

Yet he sat like a statue. Six masked figures had

appeared from the very ground, clinging to the bits of the

horses. The coach stopped. Two wild purposeless shots―the

95

first and last fired by the guards―were answered by the

muzzle of six rifles pointed into the windows, and the

passengers foolishly and impotently filed out into the road.

“Now, Bill,” said a voice, which Jeff instantly

recognized as the blacksmith’s, “we won’t keep ye long. So

hand down the treasure.”

The man’s foot was on the wheel; in another instant

he would be beside Jeff, and discovery was certain. Jeff

leaned over and unhooked the coach lamp, as if to assist him

with its light. As if in turning, he STUMBLED, broke the

lamp, ignited the kerosene, and scattered the wick and

blazing fluid over the haunches of the wheelers! The

maddened animals gave one wild plunge forwards, the coach

followed twice its length, throwing the blacksmith under its

wheels, and driving the other horses towards the bank. But

as the lamp broke in Jeff’s right hand, his practiced left hand

discharged its hidden Derringer at the head of the robber who

had held the bit of Blue Grass, and, throwing the useless

weapon away, he laid the whip smartly on her back. She

leaped forward madly, dragging the other leaders with her,

and in the next moment they were free and wildly careering

down the grade.

A dozen shots followed them. The men were

protected by the coach, but Yuba Bill groaned.

“Are you hit again?” asked Jeff hastily. He had

forgotten his saviour.

“No; but the horses are! I felt ‘em! Look at ‘em, Jeff.”

Jeff had gathered up the almost useless reins. The

horses were running away; but Blue Grass was limping.

96

“For God’s sake,” said Bill, desperately dragging his

wounded figure above the dash-board, “keep her up! LIFT

HER UP, Jeff, till we pass the curve. Don’t let her drop, or

we’re―”

“Can you hold the reins?” said Jeff quickly.

“Give ‘em here!”

Jeff passed them to the wounded man. Then, with his

bowie-knife between his teeth, he leaped over the dash-

board on the backs of the wheelers. He extinguished the

blazing drops that the wind had not blown out of their

smarting haunches, and with the skill and instinct of a

Mexican vaquero, made his way over their turbulent tossing

backs to Blue Grass, cut her traces and reins, and as the

vehicle neared the curve, with a sharp lash, drove her to the

bank, where she sank even as the coach darted by. Bill

uttered a feeble “Hurrah!” but at the same moment the reins

dropped from his fingers, and he sank at the bottom of the

boot.

Riding postilion-wise, Jeff could control the horses.

The dangerous curve was passed, but not the possibility of

pursuit. The single leader he was bestriding was

panting―more than that, he was SWEATING, and from the

evidence of Jeff’s hands, sweating BLOOD! Back of his

shoulder was a jagged hole, from which his life-blood was

welling. The off-wheel horse was limping too. That last

volley was no foolish outburst of useless rage, but was

deliberate and premeditated skill. Jeff drew the reins, and as

the coach stopped, the horse he was riding fell dead. Into the

silence that followed broke the measured beat of horses’

hoofs on the road above. He was pursued!

97

To select the best horse of the remaining unscathed

three, to break open the boot and place the treasure on his

back, and to abandon and leave the senseless Bill lying there,

was the unhesitating work of a moment. Great heroes and

great lovers are invariably one-ideaed men, and Jeff was at

that moment both.

Eighty thousand dollars in gold-dust and Jeff’s

weight was a handicap. Nevertheless he flew forward like

the wind. Presently he fell to listening. A certain hoof-beat

in the rear was growing more distinct. A bitter thought

flashed through his mind. He looked back. Over the hill

appeared the foremost of his pursuers. It was the blacksmith,

mounted on the fleetest horse in the county―Jeff’s OWN

horse―Rabbit!

But there are compensations in all new trials. As Jeff

faced round again, he saw he had reached the open table-

land, and the bleak walls and ghastly, untenanted windows

of the “Half-way House” rose before him in the distance. Jeff

was master of the ground here! He was entering the shadow

of the woods―Miss Mayfield’s woods! and there was a cut

off from the road, and a bridle-path, known only to himself,

hard by. To find it, leap the roadside ditch, dash through the

thicket, and rein up by the road again, was swiftly done.

Take a gentle woman, betray her trust, outrage her

best feelings, drive her into a corner, and you have a fury!

Take a gentle, trustful man, abuse him, show him the folly

of this gentleness and kindness, prove to him that it is

weakness, drive him into a corner, and you have a savage!

And it was this savage, with an Indian’s memory, and an

Indian’s eye and ear, that suddenly confronted the

blacksmith.

98

What more! A single shot from a trained hand and

one-ideaed intellect settled the blacksmith’s business, and

temporarily ended this Iliad! I say temporarily, for Mr.

Dodd, formerly deputy-sheriff, prudently pulled up at the top

of the hill, and observing his principal bend his head

forwards and act like a drunken man, until he reeled, limp

and sideways, from the saddle, and noticing further that Jeff

took his place with a well-filled saddle-bag, concluded to

follow cautiously and unobtrusively in the rear.

99

Chapter 7

But Jeff saw him not. With mind and will bent on one

object―to reach the first habitation, the “Summit,” and send

back help and assistance to his wounded comrade―he urged

Rabbit forward. The mare knew her rider, but he had no time

for caresses. Through the smarting of his hands he had only

just noticed that they were badly burned, and the skin was

peeling from them; he had confounded the blood that was

flowing from a cut on his scalp, with that from the wounded

horse. It was one hour yet to the “Summit,” but the road was

good, the moon was bright, he knew what Rabbit could do,

and it was not yet ten o’clock.

As the white outbuildings and irregular outlines of

the “Summit House” began to be visible, Jeff felt a singular

return of his former dreamy abstraction. The hour of peril,

anger, and excitement he had just passed through seemed

something of years ago, or rather to be obliterated with all

else that had passed since he had looked upon that scene. Yet

it was all changed―strangely changed! What Jeff had taken

for the white, wooden barns and outhouses were

greenhouses and conservatories. The “Summit Hotel” was a

picturesque villa, nestling in the self-same trees, but

approached through cultivated fields, dwellings of laborers,

parklike gates and walls, and all the bountiful appointments

of wealth and security. Jeff thought of Yuba Bill’s

malediction, and understood it as he gazed.

The barking of dogs announced his near approach to

the principal entrance. Lights were still burning in the upper

windows of the house and its offices. He was at once

100

surrounded by the strange medley of a Californian

ranchero’s service, peons, Chinese, and vaqueros. Jeff

briefly stated his business. “Ah, Carrajo!” This was a matter

for the major-domo, or, better, the padrone―Wilson! But

the padrone, Wilson, called out by the tumult, appeared in

person―a handsome, resolute, middle-aged man, who, in a

twinkling, dispersed the group to barn and stable with a

dozen orders of preparation, and then turned to Jeff.

“You are hurt; come in.”

Jeff followed him dazedly into the house. The same

sense of remote abstraction, of vague dreaminess, was

overcoming him. He resented it, and fought against it, but in

vain; he was only half conscious that his host had bathed his

head and given him some slight restorative, had said

something to him soothingly, and had left him. Jeff

wondered if he had fainted, or was about to faint―he had a

nervous dread of that womanish weakness―or if he were

really hurt worse than he believed. He tried to master himself

and grasp the situation by minutely examining the room. It

was luxuriously furnished; Jeff had but once before sat in

such an arm-chair as the one that half embraced him, and as

a boy he had dim recollections of a life like this, of which his

father was part. To poor Jeff, with his throbbing head, his

smarting hands, and his lapsing moments of half

forgetfulness, this seemed to be a return of his old

premonition. There was a vague perfume in the room, like

that which he remembered when he was in the woods with

Miss Mayfield. He believed he was growing faint again, and

was about to rise, when the door opened behind him.

“Is there anything we can do for you? Mr. Wilson has

gone to seek your friend, and has sent Manuel for a doctor.”

101

HER voice! He rose hurriedly, turned; SHE was

standing in the doorway!

She uttered a slight cry, turned very pale, advanced

towards him, stopped and leaned against the chimney-piece.

“I didn’t know it was YOU.”

With her actual presence Jeff’s dream and weakness

fled. He rose up before her, his old bashful, stammering,

awkward self.

“I didn’t know YOU lived here, Miss Mayfield.”

“If you had sent word you were coming,” said Miss

Mayfield, recovering her color brightly in one cheek.

The possibility of having sent a messenger in

advance to advise Miss Mayfield of his projected visit did

not strike Jeff as ridiculous. Your true lover is far beyond

such trivialities. He accepted the rebuke meekly. He said he

was sorry.

“You might have known it.”

“What, Miss Mayfield?”

“That I was here, if you WISHED to know.”

Jeff did not reply. He bowed his head and clasped his

burned hands together. Miss Mayfield saw their raw

surfaces, saw the ugly cut on his head, pitied him, but went

on hastily, with both cheeks burning, to say, womanlike,

what was then deepest in her heart:

102

“My brother-in-law told me your adventure; but I did

not know until I entered this room that the gentleman I

wished to help was one who had once rejected my assistance,

who had misunderstood me, and cruelly insulted me! Oh,

forgive me, Mr. Briggs” (Jeff had risen). “I did not mean

THAT. But, Mr. Jeff―Jeff―oh!” (She had caught his

tortured hand and had wrung a movement of pain from him.)

“Oh, dear! what did I do now? But Mr. Jeff, after what has

passed, after what you said to me when you went away, when

you were at that dreadful place, Campville, when you were

two months in Sacramento, you might―YOU OUGHT TO

HAVE LET ME KNOW IT!”

Jeff turned. Her face, more beautiful than he had ever

seen it, alive and eloquent with every thought that her

woman’s speech but half expressed, was very near his―so

near, that under her honest eyes the wretched scales fell from

his own, his self-wrought shackles crumbled away, and he

dropped upon his knees at her feet as she sank into the chair

he had quitted. Both his hands were grasped in her own.

“YOU went away, and I STAYED,” she said

reflectively.

“I had no home, Miss Mayfield.”

“Nor had I. I had to buy this,” she said, with a

delicious simplicity; “and bring a family here too,” she

added, “in case YOU”―she stopped, with a slight color.

“Forgive me,” said Jeff, burying his face in her

hands.

“Jeff.”

“Jessie.”

103

“Don’t you think you were a LITTLE―just a

little―mean?”

“Yes.”

Miss Mayfield uttered a faint sigh. He looked into

her anxious cheeks and eyes, his arm stole round her; their

lips met for the first time in one long lingering kiss. Then, I

fear, for the second time.

“Jeff,” said Miss Mayfield, suddenly becoming

practical and sweetly possessory, “you must have your hands

bound up in cotton.”

“Yes,” said Jeff cheerfully.

“And you must go instantly to bed.”

Jeff stared.

“Because my sister will think it very late for me to be

sitting up with a gentleman.”

The idea that Miss Mayfield was responsible to

anybody was something new to Jeff. But he said hastily, “I

must stay and wait for Bill. He risked his life for me.”

“Oh, yes! You must tell me all about it. I may wait

for THAT!”

Jeff possessed himself of the chair; in some way he

also possessed himself of Miss Mayfield without entirely

dispossessing her. Then he told his story. He hesitated over

the episode of the blacksmith. “I’m afraid I killed him,

Jessie.”

104

Miss Mayfield betrayed little concern at this possible

extreme measure with a dangerous neighbor. “He cut your

head, Jeff,” she said, passing her little hand through his curls.

“No,” said Jeff hastily, “that must have been done

BEFORE.”

“Well,” said Miss Mayfield conclusively, “he would

if he’d dared. And you brought off that wretched money in

spite of him. Poor dear Jeff.”

“Yes,” said Jeff, kissing her.

“Where is it?” asked Jessie, looking round the room.

“Oh, just out there!”

“Out where?”

“On my horse, you know, outside the door,”

continued Jeff, a little uneasily, as he rose. “I’ll go and―”

“You careless boy,” said Miss Mayfield, jumping up,

“I’ll go with you.”

They passed out on the porch together, holding each

other’s hands, like children. The forgotten Rabbit was not

there. Miss Mayfield called a vaquero.

“Ah, yes!―the caballero’s horse. Of a certainty the

other caballero had taken it!”

“The other caballero!” gasped Jeff.

105

“Si, senor. The one who arrived with you, or a

moment, the very next moment, after you. ‘Your friend,’ he

said.”

Jeff staggered against the porch, and cast one

despairing reproachful look at Miss Mayfield.

“Oh, Jeff! Jeff! don’t look so. I know I ought not to

have kept you! It’s a mistake, Jeff, believe me.”

“It’s no mistake,” said Jeff hoarsely. “Go!” he said,

turning to the vaquero, “go!―bring―” But his speech

failed. He attempted to gesticulate with his hands, ran

forward a few steps, staggered, and fell fainting on the

ground.

“Help me with the caballero into the blue room,” said

Miss Mayfield, white as Jeff. “And hark ye, Manuel! You

know every ruffian, man or woman, on this road. That horse

and those saddle-bags must be here to-morrow, if you have

to pay DOUBLE WHAT THEY’RE WORTH!”

“Si, senora.”

Jeff went off into fever, into delirium, into helpless

stupor. From time to time he moaned “Bill” and “the

treasure.” On the third day, in a lucid interval, as he lay

staring at the wall, Miss Mayfield put in his hand a letter

from the company, acknowledging the receipt of the

treasure, thanking him for his zeal, and inclosing a handsome

check.

Jeff sat up, and put his hands to his head.

“I told you it was taken by mistake, and was easily

found,” said Miss Mayfield, “didn’t I?”

106

“Yes―and Bill?”

“You know he is so much better that he expects to

leave us next week.”

“And―Jessie!”

“There―go to sleep!”

At the end of a week she introduced Jeff to her sister-

in-law, having previously run her fingers through his hair to

insure that becomingness to his curls which would better

indicate his moral character; and spoke of him as one of her

oldest Californian friends.

At the end of two weeks she again presented him as

her affianced husband―a long engagement of a year being

just passed. Mr. Wilson, who was bored by the mountain life,

undertaken to please his rich wife and richer sister, saw a

chance of escape here, and bore willing testimony to the

distant Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield of the excellence of Miss

Jessie’s choice. And Yuba Bill was Jeff’s best man.

The name of Briggs remained a power in Tuolumne

and Calaveras County. Mr. and Mrs. Briggs never had but

one word of disagreement or discussion. One day, Jeff,

looking over some old accounts of his wife’s, found an

unreceipted, unvouched for expenditure of twenty thousand

dollars. “What is this for, Jessie?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s all right, Jeff!”

But here the now business-like and practical Mr.

Briggs, father of a family, felt called upon to make some

general remarks regarding the necessity of exactitude in

accounts, etcetera.

107

“But I’d rather not tell you, Jeff.”

“But you ought to, Jessie.”

“Well then, dear, it was to get those saddle-bags of

yours from that rascal, Dodd,” said little Mrs. Briggs

meekly.

108

109

A Vision of the Fountain

Mr. Jackson Potter halted before the little cottage,

half shop, half hostelry, opposite the great gates of

Domesday Park, where tickets of admission to that venerable

domain were sold. Here Mr. Potter revealed his nationality

as a Western American, not only in his accent, but in a

certain half-humorous, half-practical questioning of the

ticket-seller―as that quasi-official stamped his

ticket―which was nevertheless delivered with such

unfailing good-humor, and such frank suggestiveness of the

perfect equality of the ticket-seller and the well-dressed

stranger that, far from producing any irritation, it attracted

the pleased attention not only of the official, but his wife and

daughter and a customer. Possibly the good looks of the

stranger had something to do with it. Jackson Potter was a

singularly handsome young fellow, with one of those ideal

faces and figures sometimes seen in Western frontier

villages, attributable to no ancestor, but evolved possibly

from novels and books devoured by ancestresses in the long

solitary winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier.

A beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent

blonde curls, poised on a shapely neck and shoulders, was

more Greek in outline than suggestive of any ordinary

American type. Finally, after having thoroughly amused his

small audience, he lifted his straw hat to the “ladies,” and

lounged out across the road to the gateway. Here he paused,

consulting his guide-book, and read aloud: “St. John’s

gateway. This massive structure, according to Leland, was

built in”―murmured―“never mind when; we’ll pass Saint

John,” marked the page with his pencil, and tendering his

ticket to the gate-keeper, heard, with some satisfaction, that,

110

as there were no other visitors just then, and as the cicerone

only accompanied parties, he would be left to himself, and

at once plunged into a by-path.

It was that loveliest of rare creations―a hot summer

day in England, with all the dampness of that sea-blown isle

wrung out of it, exhaled in the quivering blue vault overhead,

or passing as dim wraiths in the distant wood, and all the

long-matured growth of that great old garden vivified and

made resplendent by the fervid sun. The ashes of dead and

gone harvests, even the dust of those who had for ages

wrought in it, turned again and again through incessant

cultivation, seemed to move and live once more in that

present sunshine. All color appeared to be deepened and

mellowed, until even the very shadows of the trees were as

velvety as the sward they fell upon. The prairie-bred Potter,

accustomed to the youthful caprices and extravagances of his

own virgin soil, could not help feeling the influence of the

ripe restraints of this.

As he glanced through the leaves across green sunlit

spaces to the ivy-clad ruins of Domesday Abbey, which

seemed itself a growth of the very soil, he murmured to

himself: “Things had been made mighty comfortable for

folks here, you bet!” Forgotten books he had read as a boy,

scraps of school histories, or rarer novels, came back to him

as he walked along, and peopled the solitude about him with

their heroes.

Nevertheless, it was unmistakably hot―a heat

homelike in its intensity, yet of a different effect, throwing

him into languid reverie rather than filling his veins with fire.

Secure in his seclusion in the leafy chase, he took off his

jacket and rambled on in his shirt sleeves. Through the

opening he presently saw the abbey again, with the restored

wing where the noble owner lived for two or three weeks in

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the year, but now given over to the prevailing solitude. And

then, issuing from the chase, he came upon a broad, moss-

grown terrace. Before him stretched a tangled and luxuriant

wilderness of shrubs and flowers, darkened by cypress and

cedars of Lebanon; its dun depths illuminated by dazzling

white statues, vases, trellises, and paved paths, choked and

lost in the trailing growths of years of abandonment and

forgetfulness. He consulted his guide-book again. It was the

“old Italian garden,” constructed under the design of a

famous Italian gardener by the third duke; but its studied

formality being displeasing to his successor, it was allowed

to fall into picturesque decay and negligent profusion, which

were not, however, disturbed by later descendants―a fact

deplored by the artistic writer of the guide- book, who

mournfully called attention to the rare beauty of the marble

statues, urns, and fountains, ruined by neglect, although one

or two of the rarer objects had been removed to Deep Dene

Lodge, another seat of the present duke.

It is needless to say that Mr. Potter conceived at once

a humorous opposition to the artistic enthusiasm of the critic,

and, plunging into the garden, took a mischievous delight in

its wildness and the victorious struggle of nature with the

formality of art. At every step through the tangled labyrinth

he could see where precision and order had been invaded,

and even the rigid masonry broken or upheaved by the

rebellious force. Yet here and there the two powers had

combined to offer an example of beauty neither could have

effected alone. A passion vine had overrun and enclasped a

vase with a perfect symmetry no sculptor could have

achieved. A heavy balustrade was made ethereal with a

delicate fretwork of vegetation between its balusters like

lace. Here, however, the lap and gurgle of water fell

gratefully upon the ear of the perspiring and thirsty Mr.

Potter, and turned his attention to more material things.

Following the sound, he presently came upon an enormous

112

oblong marble basin containing three time-worn fountains

with grouped figures. The pipes were empty, silent, and

choked with reeds and water plants, but the great basin itself

was filled with water from some invisible source.

A terraced walk occupied one side of the long

parallelogram; at intervals and along the opposite bank, half

shadowed by willows, tinted marble figures of tritons, fauns,

and dryads arose half hidden in the reeds. They were more

or less mutilated by time, and here and there only the empty,

moss-covered plinths that had once supported them could be

seen. But they were so lifelike in their subdued color in the

shade that he was for a moment startled.

The water looked deliciously cool. An audacious

thought struck him. He was alone, and the place was a

secluded one. He knew there were no other visitors; the

marble basin was quite hidden from the rest of the garden,

and approached only from the path by which he had come,

and whose entire view he commanded. He quietly and

deliberately undressed himself under the willows, and

unhesitatingly plunged into the basin. The water was four or

five feet deep, and its extreme length afforded an excellent

swimming bath, despite the water-lilies and a few aquatic

plants that mottled its clear surface, or the sedge that clung

to the bases of the statues. He disported for some moments

in the delicious element, and then seated himself upon one

of the half-submerged plinths, almost hidden by reeds, that

had once upheld a river god. Here, lazily resting himself

upon his elbow, half his body still below the water, his quick

ear was suddenly startled by a rustling noise and the sound

of footsteps. For a moment he was inclined to doubt his

senses; he could see only the empty path before him and the

deserted terrace. But the sound became more distinct, and to

his great uneasiness appeared to come from the other side of

the fringe of willows, where there was undoubtedly a path to

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the fountain which he had overlooked. His clothes were

under those willows, but he was at least twenty yards from

the bank and an equal distance from the terrace. He was

about to slip beneath the water when, to his crowning horror,

before he could do so, a young girl slowly appeared from the

hidden willow path full upon the terrace. She was walking

leisurely with a parasol over her head and a book in her hand.

Even in his intense consternation her whole figure―a

charming one in its white dress, sailor hat, and tan

shoes―was imprinted on his memory as she instinctively

halted to look upon the fountain, evidently an unexpected

surprise to her.

A sudden idea flashed upon him. She was at least

sixty yards away; he was half hidden in the reeds and well in

the long shadows of the willows. If he remained perfectly

motionless she might overlook him at that distance, or take

him for one of the statues. He remembered also that as he

was resting on his elbow, his half- submerged body lying on

the plinth below water, he was somewhat in the attitude of

one of the river gods. And there was no other escape. If he

dived he might not be able to keep under water as long as

she remained, and any movement he knew would betray

him. He stiffened himself and scarcely breathed. Luckily for

him his attitude had been a natural one and easy to keep. It

was well, too, for she was evidently in no hurry and walked

slowly, stopping from time to time to admire the basin and

its figures. Suddenly he was instinctively aware that she was

looking towards him and even changing her position,

moving her pretty head and shading her eyes with her hand

as if for a better view. He remained motionless, scarcely

daring to breathe. Yet there was something so innocently

frank and undisturbed in her observation, that he knew as

instinctively that she suspected nothing, and took him for a

half- submerged statue. He breathed more freely. But

presently she stopped, glanced around her, and, keeping her

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eyes fixed in his direction, began to walk backwards slowly

until she reached a stone balustrade behind her. On this she

leaped, and, sitting down, opened in her lap the sketch-book

she was carrying, and, taking out a pencil, to his horror began

to sketch!

For a wild moment he recurred to his first idea of

diving and swimming at all hazards to the bank, but the

conviction that now his slightest movement must be detected

held him motionless. He must save her the mortification of

knowing she was sketching a living man, if he died for it.

She sketched rapidly but fixedly and absorbedly, evidently

forgetting all else in her work. From time to time she held

out her sketch before her to compare it with her subject. Yet

the seconds seemed minutes and the minutes hours.

Suddenly, to his great relief, a distant voice was heard calling

“Lottie.” It was a woman’s voice; by its accent it also seemed

to him an American one.

The young girl made a slight movement of

impatience, but did not look up, and her pencil moved still

more rapidly. Again the voice called, this time nearer. The

young girl’s pencil fairly flew over the paper, as, still without

looking up, she lifted a pretty voice and answered back, “Y-

e-e-s!”

It struck him that her accent was also that of a

compatriot.

“Where on earth are you?” continued the first voice,

which now appeared to come from the other side of the

willows on the path by which the young girl had approached.

“Here, aunty,” replied the girl, closing her sketch-book with

a snap and starting to her feet.

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A stout woman, fashionably dressed, made her

appearance from the willow path.

“What have you been doing all this while?” she said

querulously. “Not sketching, I hope,” she added, with a

suspicious glance at the book. “You know your professor

expressly forbade you to do so in your holidays.”

The young girl shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been

looking at the fountains,” she replied evasively.

“And horrid looking pagan things they are, too,” said

the elder woman, turning from them disgustedly, without

vouchsafing a second glance. “Come. If we expect to do the

abbey, we must hurry up, or we won’t catch the train. Your

uncle is waiting for us at the top of the garden.”

And, to Potter’s intense relief, she grasped the young

girl’s arm and hurried her away, their figures the next

moment vanishing in the tangled shrubbery.

Potter lost no time in plunging with his cramped

limbs into the water and regaining the other side. Here he

quickly half dried himself with some sun-warmed leaves and

baked mosses, hurried on his clothes, and hastened off in the

opposite direction to the path taken by them, yet with such

circuitous skill and speed that he reached the great gateway

without encountering anybody. A brisk walk brought him to

the station in time to catch a stopping train, and in half an

hour he was speeding miles away from Domesday Park and

his half-forgotten episode.

* * * * * * * *

Meantime the two ladies continued on their way to the

abbey. “I don’t see why I mayn’t sketch things I see about

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me,” said the young lady impatiently. “Of course, I

understand that I must go through the rudimentary drudgery

of my art and study from casts, and learn perspective, and all

that; but I can’t see what’s the difference between working

in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that I know is only a

study, and sketching a full or half length in the open air with

the wonderful illusion of light and shade and distance―and

grouping and combining them all―that one knows and feels

makes a picture. The real picture one makes is already in

one’s self.”

“For goodness’ sake, Lottie, don’t go on again with

your usual absurdities. Since you are bent on being an artist,

and your Popper has consented and put you under the most

expensive master in Paris, the least you can do is to follow

the rules. And I dare say he only wanted you to ‘sink the

shop’ in company. It’s such horrid bad form for you artistic

people to be always dragging out your sketch-books. What

would you say if your Popper came over here, and began to

examine every lady’s dress in society to see what material it

was, just because he was a big dry-goods dealer in

America?”

The young girl, accustomed to her aunt’s

extravagances, made no reply. But that night she consulted

her sketch, and was so far convinced of her own instincts,

and the profound impression the fountain had made upon

her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted

sketch from memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born

artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let

her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a

novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of

her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil sketch,

and wanted the vivification of color.

117

When she returned to Paris she began―still

secretly―a larger study in oils. She worked upon it in her

own room every moment she could spare from her studio

practice, unknown to her professor. It absorbed her

existence; she grew thin and pale. When it was finished, and

only then, she showed it tremblingly to her master. He stood

silent, in profound astonishment. The easel before him

showed a foreground of tangled luxuriance, from which

stretched a sheet of water like a darkened mirror, while

through parted reeds on its glossy surface arose the half-

submerged figure of a river god, exquisite in contour, yet

whose delicate outlines were almost a vision by the

crowning illusion of light, shadow, and atmosphere.

“It is a beautiful copy, mademoiselle, and I forgive

you breaking my rules,” he said, drawing a long breath. “But

I cannot now recall the original picture.”

“It’s no copy of a picture, professor,” said the young

girl timidly, and she disclosed her secret. “It was the only

perfect statue there,” she added diffidently; “but I think it

wanted― something.”

“True,” said the professor abstractedly. “Where the

elbow rests there should be a half-inverted urn flowing with

water; but the drawing of that shoulder is so perfect―as is

your study of it― that one guesses the missing forearm one

cannot see, which clasped it. Beautiful! beautiful!”

Suddenly he stopped, and turned his eyes almost

searchingly on hers.

“You say you have never drawn from the human

model, mademoiselle?”

“Never,” said the young girl innocently.

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“True,” murmured the professor again. “These are

the classic ideal measurements. There are no limbs like those

now. Yet it is wonderful! And this gem, you say, is in

England?”

“Yes.”

“Good! I am going there in a few days. I shall make

a pilgrimage to see it. Until then, mademoiselle, I beg you to

break as many of my rules as you like.”

Three weeks later she found the professor one

morning standing before her picture in her private studio.

“You have returned from England,” she said joyfully.

“I have,” said the professor gravely.

“You have seen the original subject?” she said

timidly.

“I have not. I have not seen it, mademoiselle,” he

said, gazing at her mildly through his glasses, “because it

does not exist, and never existed.”

The young girl turned pale.

“Listen. I have go to England. I arrive at the Park of

Domesday. I penetrate the beautiful, wild garden. I approach

the fountain. I see the wonderful water, the exquisite light

and shade, the lilies, the mysterious reeds―beautiful, yet not

as beautiful as you have made it, mademoiselle, but no

statue―no river god! I demand it of the concierge. He knows

of it absolutely nothing. I transport myself to the noble

proprietor, Monsieur le Duc, at a distant chateau where he

has collected the ruined marbles. It is not there.”

119

“Yet I saw it,” said the young girl earnestly, yet with

a troubled face. “O professor,” she burst out appealingly,

“what do you think it was?”

“I think, mademoiselle,” said the professor gravely,

“that you created it. Believe me, it is a function of genius!

More, it is a proof, a necessity! You saw the beautiful lake,

the ruined fountain, the soft shadows, the empty plinth,

curtained by reeds. You yourself say you feel there was

‘something wanting.’ Unconsciously you yourself supplied

it. All that you had ever dreamt of mythology, all that you

had ever seen of statuary, thronged upon you at that supreme

moment, and, evolved from your own fancy, the river god

was born. It is your own, chere enfant, as much the offspring

of your genius as the exquisite atmosphere you have caught,

the charm of light and shadow that you have brought away.

Accept my felicitations. You have little more to learn of me.”

As he bowed himself out and descended the stairs he

shrugged his shoulders slightly. “She is an adorable genius,”

he murmured. “Yet she is also a woman. Being a woman,

naturally she has a lover―this river god! Why not?”

The extraordinary success of Miss Forrest’s picture

and the instantaneous recognition of her merit as an artist,

apart from her novel subject, perhaps went further to remove

her uneasiness than any serious conviction of the professor’s

theory. Nevertheless, it appealed to her poetic and mystic

imagination, and although other subjects from her brush met

with equally phenomenal success, and she was able in a year

to return to America with a reputation assured beyond

criticism, she never entirely forgot the strange incident

connected with her initial effort.

And by degrees a singular change came over her.

Rich, famous, and attractive, she began to experience a

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sentimental and romantic interest in that episode. Once,

when reproached by her friends for her indifference to her

admirers, she had half laughingly replied that she had once

found her “ideal,” but never would again. Yet the jest had

scarcely passed her lips before she became pale and silent.

With this change came also a desire to re-purchase the

picture, which she had sold in her early success to a

speculative American picture-dealer. On inquiry she found,

alas! that it had been sold only a day or two before to a

Chicago gentleman, of the name of Potter, who had taken a

fancy to it.

Miss Forrest curled her pretty lip, but, nothing

daunted, resolved to effect her purpose, and sought the

purchaser at his hotel. She was ushered into a private

drawing-room, where, on a handsome easel, stood the newly

acquired purchase. Mr. Potter was out, “but would return in

a moment.”

Miss Forrest was relieved, for, alone and

undisturbed, she could now let her full soul go out to her

romantic creation. As she stood there, she felt the glamour

of the old English garden come back to her, the play of light

and shadow, the silent pool, the godlike face and bust, with

its cast-down, meditative eyes, seen through the parted

reeds. She clasped her hands silently before her. Should she

never see it again as then?

“Pray don’t let me disturb you; but won’t you take a

seat?”

Miss Forrest turned sharply round. Then she started,

uttered a frightened little cry, and fainted away.

Mr. Potter was touched, but a master of himself. As

she came to, he said quietly: “I came upon you suddenly―as

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you stood entranced by this picture―just as I did when I first

saw it. That’s why I bought it. Are you any relative of the

Miss Forrest who painted it?” he continued, quietly looking

at her card, which he held in his hand.

Miss Forrest recovered herself sufficiently to reply,

and stated her business with some dignity.

“Ah,” said Mr. Potter, “that is another question. You

see, the picture has a special value to me, as I once saw an

old-fashioned garden like that in England. But that chap

there―I beg your pardon, I mean that figure―I fancy, is

your own creation, entirely. However, I’ll think over your

proposition, and if you will allow me I’ll call and see you

about it.”

Mr. Potter did call―not once, but many times―and

showed quite a remarkable interest in Miss Forrest’s art. The

question of the sale of the picture, however, remained in

abeyance. A few weeks later, after a longer call than usual,

Mr. Potter said:

“Don’t you think the best thing we can do is to make

a kind of compromise, and let us own the picture together?”

And they did.

122

123

The Youngest Miss Piper

I do not think that any of us who enjoyed the

acquaintance of the Piper girls or the hospitality of Judge

Piper, their father, ever cared for the youngest sister. Not on

account of her extreme youth, for the eldest Miss Piper

confessed to twenty-six―and the youth of the youngest

sister was established solely, I think, by one big braid down

her back. Neither was it because she was the plainest, for the

beauty of the Piper girls was a recognized general

distinction, and the youngest Miss Piper was not entirely

devoid of the family charms. Nor was it from any lack of

intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her

precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness

alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight

deafness, which might impart an embarrassing publicity to

any statement―the reverse of our general feeling―that

might be confided by any one to her private ear, was a

sufficient reason; for it was pointed out that she always

understood everything that Tom Sparrell told her in his

ordinary tone of voice. Briefly, it was very possible that

Delaware―the youngest Miss Piper―did not like us. Yet it

was fondly believed by us that the other sisters failed to show

that indifference to our existence shown by Miss Delaware,

although the heartburnings, misunderstandings, jealousies,

hopes and fears, and finally the chivalrous resignation with

which we at last accepted the long foregone conclusion that

they were not for us, and far beyond our reach, is not a part

of this veracious chronicle. Enough that none of the

flirtations of her elder sisters affected or were shared by the

youngest Miss Piper. She moved in this heart-breaking

atmosphere with sublime indifference, treating her sisters’

124

affairs with what we considered rank simplicity or appalling

frankness. Their few admirers who were weak enough to

attempt to gain her mediation or confidence had reason to

regret it.

“It’s no kind o’ use givin’ me goodies,” she said to a

helpless suitor of Louisiana Piper’s who had offered to bring

her some sweets, “for I ain’t got no influence with Lu, and if

I don’t give ‘em up to her when she hears of it, she’ll nag me

and hate you like pizen. Unless,” she added thoughtfully, “it

was wintergreen lozenges; Lu can’t stand them, or anybody

who eats them within a mile.” It is needless to add that the

miserable man, thus put upon his gallantry, was obliged in

honor to provide Del with the wintergreen lozenges that kept

him in disfavor and at a distance. Unfortunately, too, any

predilection or pity for any particular suitor of her sister’s

was attended by even more disastrous consequences. It was

reported that while acting as “gooseberry”―a role usually

assigned to her―between Virginia Piper and an

exceptionally timid young surveyor, during a ramble she

conceived a rare sentiment of humanity towards the unhappy

man. After once or twice lingering behind in the ostentatious

picking of a wayside flower, or “running on ahead” to look

at a mountain view, without any apparent effect on the shy

and speechless youth, she decoyed him aside while her elder

sister rambled indifferently and somewhat scornfully on.

The youngest Miss Piper leaped upon the rail of a fence, and

with the stalk of a thimbleberry in her mouth swung her

small feet to and fro and surveyed him dispassionately.

“Ye don’t seem to be ketchin’ on?” she said

tentatively.

The young man smiled feebly and interrogatively.

125

“Don’t seem to be either follering suit nor trumpin’,”

continued Del bluntly.

“I suppose so―that is, I fear that Miss Virginia”―he

stammered.

“Speak up! I’m a little deaf. Say it again!” said Del,

screwing up her eyes and eyebrows.

The young man was obliged to admit in stentorian

tones that his progress had been scarcely satisfactory.

“You’re goin’ on too slow―that’s it,” said Del

critically. “Why, when Captain Savage meandered along

here with Jinny” (Virginia) “last week, afore we got as far as

this he’d reeled off a heap of Byron and Jamieson”

(Tennyson), “and sich; and only yesterday Jinny and Doctor

Beveridge was blowin’ thistletops to know which was a flirt

all along the trail past the crossroads. Why, ye ain’t picked

ez much as a single berry for Jinny, let alone Lad’s Love or

Johnny Jumpups and Kissme’s, and ye keep talkin’ across

me, you two, till I’m tired. Now look here,” she burst out

with sudden decision, “Jinny’s gone on ahead in a kind o’

huff; but I reckon she’s done that afore too, and you’ll find

her, jest as Spinner did, on the rise of the hill, sittin’ on a pine

stump and lookin’ like this.” (Here the youngest Miss Piper

locked her fingers over her left knee, and drew it slightly

up―with a sublime indifference to the exposure of

considerable small-ankled red stocking―and with a far-off,

plaintive stare, achieved a colorable imitation of her elder

sister’s probable attitude.) “Then you jest go up softly, like

as you was a bear, and clap your hands on her eyes, and say

in a disguised voice like this” (here Del turned on a high

falsetto beyond any masculine compass), “‘Who’s who?’

jest like in forfeits.”

126

“But she’ll be sure to know me,” said the surveyor

timidly.

“She won’t,” said Del in scornful skepticism.

“I hardly think”―stammered the young man, with an

awkward smile, “that I―in fact―she’ll discover

me―before I can get beside her.”

“Not if you go softly, for she’ll be sittin’ back to the

road, so― gazing away, so”―the youngest Miss Piper again

stared dreamily in the distance, “and you’ll creep up just

behind, like this.”

“But won’t she be angry? I haven’t known her

long―that is―don’t you see?” He stopped embarrassedly.

“Can’t hear a word you say,” said Del, shaking her

head decisively. “You’ve got my deaf ear. Speak louder, or

come closer.”

But here the instruction suddenly ended, once and for

all time! For whether the young man was seriously anxious

to perfect himself; whether he was truly grateful to the young

girl and tried to show it; whether he was emboldened by the

childish appeal of the long brown distinguishing braid down

her back, or whether he suddenly found something

peculiarly provocative in the reddish brown eyes between

their thickset hedge of lashes, and with the trim figure and

piquant pose, and was seized with that hysteric desperation

which sometimes attacks timidity itself, I cannot say!

Enough that he suddenly put his arm around her waist and

his lips to her soft satin cheek, peppered and salted as it was

by sun-freckles and mountain air, and received a sound box

on the ear for his pains. The incident was closed. He did not

repeat the experiment on either sister. The disclosure of his

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rebuff seemed, however, to give a singular satisfaction to

Red Gulch.

While it may be gathered from this that the youngest

Miss Piper was impervious to general masculine advances,

it was not until later that Red Gulch was thrown into

skeptical astonishment by the rumors that all this time she

really had a lover! Allusion has been made to the charge that

her deafness did not prevent her from perfectly

understanding the ordinary tone of voice of a certain Mr.

Thomas Sparrell.

No undue significance was attached to this fact

through the very insignificance and “impossibility” of that

individual;―a lanky, red-haired youth, incapacitated for

manual labor through lameness― a clerk in a general store

at the Cross Roads! He had never been the recipient of Judge

Piper’s hospitality; he had never visited the house even with

parcels; apparently his only interviews with her or any of the

family had been over the counter. To do him justice he

certainly had never seemed to seek any nearer acquaintance;

he was not at the church door when her sisters, beautiful in

their Sunday gowns, filed into the aisle, with little Delaware

bringing up the rear; he was not at the Democratic barbecue,

that we attended without reference to our personal politics,

and solely for the sake of Judge Piper and the girls; nor did

he go to the Agricultural Fair Ball―open to all. His

abstention we believed to be owing to his lameness; to a

wholesome consciousness of his own social defects; or an

inordinate passion for reading cheap scientific textbooks,

which did not, however, add fluency nor conviction to his

speech. Neither had he the abstraction of a student, for his

accounts were kept with an accuracy which struck us, who

dealt at the store, as ignobly practical, and even malignant.

Possibly we might have expressed this opinion more

strongly but for a certain rude vigor of repartee which he

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possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a temper on

occasion. “Them red-haired chaps is like to be tetchy and to

kinder see blood through their eyelashes,” had been

suggested by an observing customer.

In short, little as we knew of the youngest Miss Piper,

he was the last man we should have suspected her to select

as an admirer. What we did know of their public relations,

purely commercial ones, implied the reverse of any cordial

understanding. The provisioning of the Piper household was

entrusted to Del, with other practical odds and ends of

housekeeping, not ornamental, and the following is said to

be a truthful record of one of their overheard interviews at

the store:

The youngest Miss Piper, entering, displacing a

quantity of goods in the centre to make a sideways seat for

herself, and looking around loftily as she took a

memorandum-book and pencil from her pocket.

“Ahem! If I ain’t taking you away from your studies,

Mr. Sparrell, maybe you’ll be good enough to look here a

minit;―but” (in affected politeness) “if I’m disturbing you I

can come another time.”

Sparrell, placing the book he had been reading

carefully under the counter, and advancing to Miss Delaware

with a complete ignoring of her irony: “What can we do for

you to-day, Miss Piper?”

Miss Delaware, with great suavity of manner,

examining her memorandum-book: “I suppose it wouldn’t

be shocking your delicate feelings too much to inform you

that the canned lobster and oysters you sent us yesterday

wasn’t fit for hogs?”

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Sparrell (blandly): “They weren’t intended for them,

Miss Piper. If we had known you were having company over

from Red Gulch to dinner, we might have provided

something more suitable for them. We have a fair quality of

oil-cake and corn-cobs in stock, at reduced figures. But the

canned provisions were for your own family.”

Miss Delaware (secretly pleased at this sarcastic

allusion to her sister’s friends, but concealing her delight):

“I admire to hear you talk that way, Mr. Sparrell; it’s better

than minstrels or a circus. I suppose you get it outer that

book,” indicating the concealed volume. “What do you call

it?”

Sparrell (politely): “The First Principles of

Geology.”

Miss Delaware, leaning sideways and curling her

little fingers around her pink ear: “Did you say the first

principles of ‘geology’ or ‘politeness’? You know I am so

deaf; but, of course, it couldn’t be that.”

Sparrell (easily): “Oh no, you seem to have that in

your hand”― pointing to Miss Delaware’s memorandum-

book―“you were quoting from it when you came in.”

Miss Delaware, after an affected silence of deep

resignation: “Well! it’s too bad folks can’t just spend their

lives listenin’ to such elegant talk; I’d admire to do nothing

else! But there’s my family up at Cottonwood―and they

must eat. They’re that low that they expect me to waste my

time getting food for ‘em here, instead of drinking in the

First Principles of the Grocery.”

“Geology,” suggested Sparrell blandly. “The history

of rock formation.”

130

“Geology,” accepted Miss Delaware apologetically;

“the history of rocks, which is so necessary for knowing just

how much sand you can put in the sugar. So I reckon I’ll

leave my list here, and you can have the things toted to

Cottonwood when you’ve got through with your First

Principles.”

She tore out a list of her commissions from a page of

her memorandum-book, leaped lightly from the counter,

threw her brown braid from her left shoulder to its proper

place down her back, shook out her skirts deliberately, and

saying, “Thank you for a most improvin’ afternoon, Mr.

Sparrell,” sailed demurely out of the store.

A few auditors of this narrative thought it

inconsistent that a daughter of Judge Piper and a sister of the

angelic host should put up with a mere clerk’s familiarity,

but it was pointed out that “she gave him as good as he sent,”

and the story was generally credited. But certainly no one

ever dreamed that it pointed to any more precious

confidences between them.

I think the secret burst upon the family, with other

things, at the big picnic at Reservoir Canyon. This festivity

had been arranged for weeks previously, and was undertaken

chiefly by the “Red Gulch Contingent,” as we were called,

as a slight return to the Piper family for their frequent

hospitality. The Piper sisters were expected to bring nothing

but their own personal graces and attend to the ministration

of such viands and delicacies as the boys had profusely

supplied.

The site selected was Reservoir Canyon, a beautiful,

triangular valley with very steep sides, one of which was

crowned by the immense reservoir of the Pioneer Ditch

Company. The sheer flanks of the canyon descended in

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furrowed lines of vines and clinging bushes, like folds of

falling skirts, until they broke again into flounces of

spangled shrubbery over a broad level carpet of monkshood,

mariposas, lupines, poppies, and daisies. Tempered and

secluded from the sun’s rays by its lofty shadows, the

delicious obscurity of the canyon was in sharp contrast to the

fiery mountain trail that in the full glare of the noonday sky

made its tortuous way down the hillside, like a stream of

lava, to plunge suddenly into the valley and extinguish itself

in its coolness as in a lake. The heavy odors of wild

honeysuckle, syringa, and ceanothus that hung over it were

lightened and freshened by the sharp spicing of pine and bay.

The mountain breeze which sometimes shook the serrated

tops of the large redwoods above with a chill from the remote

snow peaks even in the heart of summer, never reached the

little valley.

It seemed an ideal place for a picnic. Everybody was

therefore astonished to hear that an objection was suddenly

raised to this perfect site. They were still more astonished to

know that the objector was the youngest Miss Piper! Pressed

to give her reasons, she had replied that the locality was

dangerous; that the reservoir placed upon the mountain,

notoriously old and worn out, had been rendered more

unsafe by false economy in unskillful and hasty repairs to

satisfy speculating stockbrokers, and that it had lately shown

signs of leakage and sapping of its outer walls; that, in the

event of an outbreak, the little triangular valley, from which

there was no outlet, would be instantly flooded. Asked still

more pressingly to give her authority for these details, she at

first hesitated, and then gave the name of Tom Sparrell.

The derision with which this statement was received

by us all, as the opinion of a sedentary clerk, was quite

natural and obvious, but not the anger which it excited in the

breast of Judge Piper; for it was not generally known that the

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judge was the holder of a considerable number of shares in

the Pioneer Ditch Company, and that large dividends had

been lately kept up by a false economy of expenditure, to

expedite a “sharp deal” in the stock, by which the judge and

others could sell out of a failing company. Rather, it was

believed, that the judge’s anger was due only to the

discovery of Sparrell’s influence over his daughter and his

interference with the social affairs of Cottonwood. It was

said that there was a sharp scene between the youngest Miss

Piper and the combined forces of the judge and the elder

sisters, which ended in the former’s resolute refusal to attend

the picnic at all if that site was selected.

As Delaware was known to be fearless even to the

point of recklessness, and fond of gayety, her refusal only

intensified the belief that she was merely “stickin’ up for

Sparrell’s judgment” without any reference to her own

personal safety or that of her sisters. The warning was

laughed away; the opinion of Sparrell treated with ridicule

as the dyspeptic and envious expression of an impractical

man. It was pointed out that the reservoir had lasted a long

time even in its alleged ruinous state; that only a miracle of

coincidence could make it break down that particular

afternoon of the picnic; that even if it did happen, there was

no direct proof that it would seriously flood the valley, or at

best add more than a spice of excitement to the affair. The

“Red Gulch Contingent,” who would be there, was quite as

capable of taking care of the ladies, in case of any accident,

as any lame crank who wouldn’t, but could only croak a

warning to them from a distance. A few even wished

something might happen that they might have an opportunity

of showing their superior devotion; indeed, the prospect of

carrying the half-submerged sisters, in a condition of

helpless loveliness, in their arms to a place of safety was a

fascinating possibility. The warning was conspicuously

ineffective; everybody looked eagerly forward to the day and

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the unchanged locality; to the greatest hopefulness and

anticipation was added the stirring of defiance, and when at

last the appointed hour had arrived, the picnic party passed

down the twisting mountain trail through the heat and glare

in a fever of enthusiasm.

It was a pretty sight to view this sparkling

procession―the girls cool and radiant in their white, blue,

and yellow muslins and flying ribbons, the “Contingent” in

its cleanest ducks, and blue and red flannel shirts, the judge

white-waistcoated and panama- hatted, with a new dignity

borrowed from the previous circumstances, and three or four

impressive Chinamen bringing up the rear with hampers―as

it at last debouched into Reservoir Canyon.

Here they dispersed themselves over the limited area,

scarcely half an acre, with the freedom of escaped school

children. They were secure in their woodland privacy. They

were overlooked by no high road and its passing teams; they

were safe from accidental intrusion from the settlement;

indeed they went so far as to effect the exclusiveness of

“clique.” At first they amused themselves by casting

humorously defiant eyes at the long low Ditch Reservoir,

which peeped over the green wall of the ridge, six hundred

feet above them; at times they even simulated an

exaggerated terror of it, and one recognized humorist

declaimed a grotesque appeal to its forbearance, with

delightful local allusions. Others pretended to discover near

a woodman’s hut, among the belt of pines at the top of the

descending trail, the peeping figure of the ridiculous and

envious Sparrell. But all this was presently forgotten in the

actual festivity. Small as was the range of the valley, it still

allowed retreats during the dances for waiting couples

among the convenient laurel and manzanita bushes which

flounced the mountain side. After the dancing, old-fashioned

children’s games were revived with great laughter and half-

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hearted and coy protests from the ladies; notably one pastime

known as “I’m a-pinin’,” in which ingenious performance

the victim was obliged to stand in the centre of a circle and

publicly “pine” for a member of the opposite sex. Some

hilarity was occasioned by the mischievous Miss “Georgy”

Piper declaring, when it came to her turn, that she was

“pinin’” for a look at the face of Tom Sparrell just now!

In this local trifling two hours passed, until the party

sat down to the long-looked for repast. It was here that the

health of Judge Piper was neatly proposed by the editor of

the “Argus.” The judge responded with great dignity and

some emotion. He reminded them that it had been his

humble endeavor to promote harmony―that harmony so

characteristic of American principles―in social as he had in

political circles, and particularly among the strangely

constituted yet purely American elements of frontier life. He

accepted the present festivity with its overflowing

hospitalities, not in recognition of himself―(“yes!

yes!”)―nor of his family― (enthusiastic protests)―but of

that American principle! If at one time it seemed probable

that these festivities might be marred by the machinations of

envy―(groans)―or that harmony interrupted by the

importation of low-toned material interests―(groans)―he

could say that, looking around him, he had never before

felt―er―that― Here the judge stopped short, reeled

slightly forward, caught at a camp-stool, recovered himself

with an apologetic smile, and turned inquiringly to his

neighbor.

A light laugh―instantly suppressed―at what was at

first supposed to be the effect of the “overflowing

hospitality” upon the speaker himself, went around the male

circle until it suddenly appeared that half a dozen others had

started to their feet at the same time, with white faces, and

that one of the ladies had screamed.

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“What is it?” everybody was asking with

interrogatory smiles.

It was Judge Piper who replied:

“A little shock of earthquake,” he said blandly; “a

mere thrill! I think,” he added with a faint smile, “we may

say that Nature herself has applauded our efforts in good old

Californian fashion, and signified her assent. What are you

saying, Fludder?”

“I was thinking, sir,” said Fludder deferentially, in a

lower voice, “that if anything was wrong in the reservoir, this

shock, you know, might”―

He was interrupted by a faint crashing and crackling

sound, and looking up, beheld a good-sized boulder,

evidently detached from some greater height, strike the

upland plateau at the left of the trail and bound into the fringe

of forest beside it. A slight cloud of dust marked its course,

and then lazily floated away in mid air. But it had been

watched agitatedly, and it was evident that that singular loss

of nervous balance which is apt to affect all those who go

through the slightest earthquake experience was felt by all.

But some sense of humor, however, remained.

“Looks as if the water risks we took ain’t goin’ to

cover earthquakes,” drawled Dick Frisney; “still that wasn’t

a bad shot, if we only knew what they were aiming at.”

“Do be quiet,” said Virginia Piper, her cheeks pink

with excitement. “Listen, can’t you? What’s that funny

murmuring you hear now and then up there?”

136

“It’s only the snow-wind playin’ with the pines on

the summit. You girls won’t allow anybody any fun but

yourselves.”

But here a scream from “Georgy,” who, assisted by

Captain Fairfax, had mounted a camp-stool at the mouth of

the valley, attracted everybody’s attention. She was standing

upright, with dilated eyes, staring at the top of the trail.

“Look!” she said excitedly, “if the trail isn’t moving!”

Everybody faced in that direction. At the first glance

it seemed indeed as if the trail was actually moving;

wriggling and undulating its tortuous way down the

mountain like a huge snake, only swollen to twice its usual

size. But the second glance showed it to be no longer a trail

but a channel of water, whose stream, lifted in a bore-like

wall four or five feet high, was plunging down into the

devoted valley.

For an instant they were unable to comprehend even

the nature of the catastrophe. The reservoir was directly over

their heads; the bursting of its wall they had imagined would

naturally bring down the water in a dozen trickling streams

or falls over the cliff above them and along the flanks of the

mountain. But that its suddenly liberated volume should

overflow the upland beyond and then descend in a pent-up

flood by their own trail and their only avenue of escape, had

been beyond their wildest fancy.

They met this smiting truth with that characteristic

short laugh with which the American usually receives the

blow of Fate or the unexpected―as if he recognized only the

absurdity of the situation. Then they ran to the women,

collected them together, and dragged them to vantages of

fancied security among the bushes which flounced the long

137

skirts of the mountain walls. But I leave this part of the

description to the characteristic language of one of the party:

“When the flood struck us, it did not seem to take any

stock of us in particular, but laid itself out to ‘go for’ that

picnic for all it was worth! It wiped it off the face of the earth

in about twenty-five seconds! It first made a clean break

from stem to stern, carrying everything along with it. The

first thing I saw was old Judge Piper, puttin’ on his best licks

to get away from a big can of strawberry ice cream that was

trundling after him and trying to empty itself on his collar,

whenever a bigger wave lifted it. He was followed by what

was left of the brass band; the big drum just humpin’ itself

to keep abreast o’ the ice cream, mixed up with camp-stools,

music-stands, a few Chinamen, and then what they call in

them big San Francisco processions ‘citizens generally.’ The

hull thing swept up the canyon inside o’ thirty seconds.

Then, what Captain Fairfax called ‘the reflex action in the

laws o’ motion’ happened, and darned if the hull blamed

procession didn’t sweep back again―this time all the heavy

artillery, such as camp- kettles, lager beer kegs, bottles,

glasses, and crockery that was left behind takin’ the lead

now, and Judge Piper and that ice cream can bringin’ up the

rear. As the jedge passed us the second time, we noticed that

that ice cream can―hevin’ swallowed water―was kinder

losing its wind, and we encouraged the old man by shoutin’

out, ‘Five to one on him!’ And then, you wouldn’t believe

what followed. Why, darn my skin, when that ‘reflex’ met

the current at the other end, it just swirled around again in

what Captain Fairfax called the ‘centrifugal curve,’ and just

went round and round the canyon like ez when yer washin’

the dirt out o’ a prospectin’ pan― every now and then

washin’ some one of the boys that was in it, like scum, up

ag’in the banks.

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“We managed in this way to snake out the judge, jest

ez he was sailin’ round on the home stretch, passin’ the

quarter post two lengths ahead o’ the can. A good deal o’ the

ice cream had washed away, but it took us ten minutes to

shake the cracked ice and powdered salt out o’ the old man’s

clothes, and warm him up again in the laurel bush where he

was clinging. This sort o’ ‘Here we go round the mulberry

bush’ kep’ on until most o’ the humans was got out, and only

the furniture o’ the picnic was left in the race. Then it got

kinder mixed up, and went sloshin’ round here and there, ez

the water kep’ comin’ down by the trail. Then Lulu Piper,

what I was holdin’ up all the time in a laurel bush, gets an

idea, for all she was wet and draggled; and ez the things went

bobbin’ round, she calls out the figures o’ a cotillon to ‘em.

‘Two camp-stools forward.’ ‘Sashay and back to your

places.’ ‘Change partners.’ ‘Hands all round.’

“She was clear grit, you bet! And the joke caught on

and the other girls jined in, and it kinder cheered ‘em, for

they was wantin’ it. Then Fludder allowed to pacify ‘em by

sayin’ he just figured up the size o’ the reservoir and the size

o’ the canyon, and he kalkilated that the cube was about ekal,

and the canyon couldn’t flood any more. And then

Lulu―who was peart as a jay and couldn’t be

fooled―speaks up and says, ‘What’s the matter with the

ditch, Dick?’

“Lord! then we knew that she knew the worst; for of

course all the water in the ditch itself―fifty miles of

it!―was drainin’ now into that reservoir and was bound to

come down to the canyon.”

It was at this point that the situation became really

desperate, for they had now crawled up the steep sides as far

as the bushes afforded foothold, and the water was still

rising. The chatter of the girls ceased, there were long

139

silences, in which the men discussed the wildest plans, and

proposed to tear their shirts into strips to make ropes to

support the girls by sticks driven into the mountain side. It

was in one of those intervals that the distinct strokes of a

woodman’s axe were heard high on the upland at the point

where the trail descended to the canyon. Every ear was alert,

but only those on one side of the canyon could get a fair view

of the spot. This was the good fortune of Captain Fairfax and

Georgy Piper, who had climbed to the highest bush on that

side, and were now standing up, gazing excitedly in that

direction.

“Some one is cutting down a tree at the head of the

trail,” shouted Fairfax. The response and joyful explanation,

“for a dam across the trail,” was on everybody’s lips at the

same time.

But the strokes of the axe were slow and painfully

intermittent. Impatience burst out.

“Yell to him to hurry up! Why haven’t they brought

two men?”

“It’s only one man,” shouted the captain, “and he

seems to be a cripple. By Jiminy!―it is―yes!―it’s Tom

Sparrell!”

There was a dead silence. Then, I grieve to say,

shame and its twin brother rage took possession of their

weak humanity. Oh, yes! It was all of a piece! Why in the

name of Folly hadn’t he sent for an able-bodied man. Were

they to be drowned through his cranky obstinacy?

The blows still went on slowly. Presently, however,

they seemed to alternate with other blows―but alas! they

were slower, and if possible feebler!

140

“Have they got another cripple to work?” roared the

Contingent in one furious voice.

“No―it’s a woman―a little one―yes! a girl. Hello!

Why, sure as you live, it’s Delaware!”

A spontaneous cheer burst from the Contingent,

partly as a rebuke to Sparrell, I think, partly from some

shame over their previous rage. He could take it as he liked.

Still the blows went on distressingly slow. The girls

were hoisted on the men’s shoulders; the men were half

submerged. Then there was a painful pause; then a

crumbling crash. Another cheer went up from the canyon.

“It’s down! straight across the trail,” shouted Fairfax,

“and a part of the bank on the top of it.”

There was another moment of suspense. Would it

hold or be carried away by the momentum of the flood? It

held! In a few moments Fairfax again gave voice to the

cheering news that the flow had stopped and the submerged

trail was reappearing. In twenty minutes it was clear―a

muddy river bed, but possible of ascent! Of course there was

no diminution of the water in the canyon, which had no

outlet, yet it now was possible for the party to swing from

bush to bush along the mountain side until the foot of the

trail―no longer an opposing one―was reached. There were

some missteps and mishaps―flounderings in the water, and

some dangerous rescues― but in half an hour the whole

concourse stood upon the trail and commenced the ascent. It

was a slow, difficult, and lugubrious procession―I fear not

the best-tempered one, now that the stimulus of danger and

chivalry was past. When they reached the dam made by the

fallen tree, although they were obliged to make a long detour

141

to avoid its steep sides, they could see how successfully it

had diverted the current to a declivity on the other side.

But strangely enough they were greeted by nothing

else! Sparrell and the youngest Miss Piper were gone; and

when they at last reached the highroad, they were astounded

to hear from a passing teamster that no one in the settlement

knew anything of the disaster!

This was the last drop in their cup of bitterness! They

who had expected that the settlement was waiting

breathlessly for their rescue, who anticipated that they would

be welcomed as heroes, were obliged to meet the ill-

concealed amusement of passengers and friends at their

dishevelled and bedraggled appearance, which suggested

only the blundering mishaps of an ordinary summer outing!

“Boatin’ in the reservoir, and fell in?” “Playing at canal-boat

in the Ditch?” were some of the cheerful hypotheses. The

fleeting sense of gratitude they had felt for their deliverers

was dissipated by the time they had reached their homes, and

their rancor increased by the information that when the

earthquake occurred Mr. Tom Sparrell and Miss Delaware

were enjoying a “pasear” in the forest― he having a half-

holiday by virtue of the festival―and that the earthquake

had revived his fears of a catastrophe. The two had procured

axes in the woodman’s hut and did what they thought was

necessary to relieve the situation of the picnickers. But the

very modesty of this account of their own performance had

the effect of belittling the catastrophe itself, and the

picnickers’ report of their exceeding peril was received with

incredulous laughter.

For the first time in the history of Red Gulch there

was a serious division between the Piper family, supported

by the Contingent, and the rest of the settlement. Tom

Sparrell’s warning was remembered by the latter, and the

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ingratitude of the picnickers to their rescuers commented

upon; the actual calamity to the reservoir was more or less

attributed to the imprudent and reckless contiguity of the

revelers on that day, and there were not wanting those who

referred the accident itself to the machinations of the

scheming Ditch Director Piper!

It was said that there was a stormy scene in the Piper

household that evening. The judge had demanded that

Delaware should break off her acquaintance with Sparrell,

and she had refused; the judge had demanded of Sparrell’s

employer that he should discharge him, and had been met

with the astounding information that Sparrell was already a

silent partner in the concern. At this revelation Judge Piper

was alarmed; while he might object to a clerk who could not

support a wife, as a consistent democrat he could not oppose

a fairly prosperous tradesman. A final appeal was made to

Delaware; she was implored to consider the situation of her

sisters, who had all made more ambitious marriages or were

about to make them. Why should she now degrade the family

by marrying a country storekeeper?

It is said that here the youngest Miss Piper made a

memorable reply, and a revelation the truth of which was

never gainsaid:

“You all wanter know why I’m going to marry Tom

Sparrell?” she queried, standing up and facing the whole

family circle.

“Yes.”

“Why I prefer him to the hull caboodle that you girls

have married or are going to marry?” she continued,

meditatively biting the end of her braid.

143

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s the only man of the whole lot that hasn’t

proposed to me first.”

It is presumed that Sparrell made good the omission,

or that the family were glad to get rid of her, for they were

married that autumn. And really a later comparison of the

family records shows that while Captain Fairfax remained

“Captain Fairfax,” and the other sons-in-law did not advance

proportionately in standing or riches, the lame storekeeper

of Red Gulch became the Honorable Senator Tom Sparrell.

144

145

The Right Eye of the

Commander

The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of

California in a southwesterly gale. The little bay of San

Carlos, albeit sheltered by the headlands of the blessed

Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam clung quivering to

the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air was filled

with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante,

Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured

window of the Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt breath of

the distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried cheeks.

The Commander, I have said, was gazing

thoughtfully from the window of the guardroom. He may

have been reviewing the events of the year now about to pass

away. But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there was little

to review; the year, like its predecessors, had been

uneventful―the days had slipped by in a delicious

monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or

interruption. The regularly recurring feasts and saints’ days,

the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport

ship and rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of his

patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was

certainly no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry

amply supplied the wants of Presidio and Mission. Isolated

from the family of nations, the wars which shook the world

concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the

struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the other

side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness. In short,

it was that glorious Indian summer of California history

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around which so much poetical haze still lingers―that

bland, indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be

followed by the wintry storms of Mexican independence and

the reviving spring of American conquest.

The Commander turned from the window and

walked toward the fire that burned brightly on the deep

ovenlike hearth. A pile of copybooks, the work of the

Presidio school, lay on the table. As he turned over the leaves

with a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture

text―the first pious pothooks of the pupils of San

Carlos―an audible commentary fell from his lips:

“‘Abimelech took her from Abraham’―ah, little one,

excellent!― ‘Jacob sent to see his brother’―body of Christ!

that upstroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor

shall see it!” A film of honest pride dimmed the

Commander’s left eye―the right, alas! twenty years before

had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed it softly with

the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued: “‘The

Ishmaelites having arrived―’”

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a

foot upon the threshold, and a stranger entered. With the

instinct of an old soldier, the Commander, after one glance

at the intruder, turned quickly toward the wall, where his

trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But it was

not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had seen

that weapon it was being ridden up and down the gallery by

Pepito, the infant son of Bautista, the tortilla-maker, he

blushed and then contented himself with frowning upon the

intruder.

But the stranger’s air, though irreverent, was

decidedly peaceful. He was unarmed, and wore the ordinary

cape of tarpaulin and sea boots of a mariner. Except a

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villainous smell of codfish, there was little about him that

was peculiar.

His name, as he informed the Commander, in

Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise―his

name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner

GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts,

on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by

stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged

permission to ride out the gale under the headlands of the

blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he did not need, having

taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict surveillance

of the Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign vessels,

and would do nothing against the severe discipline and good

order of the settlement. There was a slight tinge of sarcasm

in his tone as he glanced toward the desolate parade ground

of the Presidio and the open unguarded gate. The fact was

that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had discreetly retired to

shelter at the beginning of the storm, and was then sound

asleep in the corridor.

The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were

severe, but he was accustomed to exercise individual

authority, and beyond an old order issued ten years before,

regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there was no

precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a

sentiment of humanity urged him to grant the stranger’s

request. It is but just to the Commander to say that his

inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh with his decision.

He would have denied with equal disregard of consequences

that right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded

so gracefully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated

only that there should be no communication between the

ship and shore. “For yourself, Senor Captain,” he continued,

“accept my hospitality. The fort is yours as long as you shall

grace it with your distinguished presence”; and with old-

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fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance of withdrawing

from the guardroom.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the

half-dismantled fort, the two moldy brass cannon, cast in

Manila a century previous. and the shiftless garrison. A wild

thought of accepting the Commander’s offer literally,

conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let slip

an offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely

reflection of the commercial unimportance of the transaction

checked him. He only took a capacious quid of tobacco as

the Commander gravely drew a settle before the fire, and in

honor of his guest untied the black-silk handkerchief that

bound his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that

night it becomes me not, as a grave chronicler of the salient

points of history, to relate. I have said that Master Peleg

Scudder was a fluent talker, and under the influence of divers

strong waters, furnished by his host, he became still more

loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty years’ budget

of gossip! The Commander learned, for the first time, how

Great Britain lost her colonies; of the French Revolution; of

the great Napoleon, whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg

colored more highly than the Commander’s superiors would

have liked. And when Peleg turned questioner, the

Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made himself

master of the gossip of the Mission and Presidio, the “small-

beer” chronicles of that pastoral age, the conversion of the

heathen, the Presidio schools, and even asked the

Commander how he had lost his eye! It is said that at this

point of the conversation Master Peleg produced from about

his person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled

trifles, and even forced some of them upon his host. It is

further alleged that under the malign influence of Peleg and

several glasses of aguardiente, the Commander lost

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somewhat of his decorum, and behaved in a manner

unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown

Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice divers

madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion;

chiefly in regard to a “little one” who was his, the

Commander’s, “soul”! These allegations, perhaps unworthy

the notice of a serious chronicler, should be received with

great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay.

That the Commander, however, took a handkerchief and

attempted to show his guest the mysteries of the

SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous manner

about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the

purposes of this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his

host to bed with many protestations of undying friendship,

and then, as the gale had abated, took his leave of the

Presidio and hurried aboard the GENERAL COURT. When

the day broke the ship was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is

said that the holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a

loud chanting in the plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms

through their noses; that for many days after an odor of salt

codfish prevailed in the settlement; that a dozen hard

nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were found in

the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several

bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to

oats, but were quite inadequate to the purposes of provender,

were discovered in the stable of the blacksmith. But when

the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yankee trader’s

word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish port regulations,

and the proverbial indisposition of my countrymen to impose

upon the confidence of a simple people, he will at once reject

this part of the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the

Commander. The sun was shining brightly, and the storm

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had ceased. He sat up in bed, and through the force of habit

rubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of the previous

night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran

to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden

thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed both of his eyes.

Not content with this, he consulted the metallic mirror which

hung beside his crucifix. There was no mistake; the

Commander had a visible second eye―a right one―as

good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this

transformation, but one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It

was one of those rare miracles vouchsafed a pious Catholic

community as an evidence to the heathen, through the

intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their

beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith,

should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation was

most fit and seemly. The Commander himself was reticent;

he could not tell a falsehood―he dared not tell the truth.

After all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the

powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it wise

and discreet for him to undeceive them? For the first time in

his life the Commander thought of policy―for the first time

he quoted that text which has been the lure of so many well-

meaning but easy Christians, of being “all things to all men.”

Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the

little settlement. The Right Eye of the Commander, although

miraculous, seemed to exercise a baleful effect upon the

beholder. No one could look at it without winking. It was

cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than that, it

seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience―a faculty

of seeing through and into the inarticulate thoughts of those

it looked upon. The soldiers of the garrison obeyed the eye

rather than the voice of their commander, and answered his

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glance rather than his lips in questioning. The servants could

not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that seemed to

pursue them. The children of the Presidio school smirched

their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor

Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous

upstroke when her patron stood beside her. Gradually

distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity took the

place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San

Carlos. Whenever the Right Eye of the Commander fell, a

shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful

influence of his miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its

effect upon others, he only saw in their actions evidence of

certain things that the crafty Peleg had hinted on that

eventful New Year’s eve. His most trusty retainers

stammered, blushed, and faltered before him. Self-

accusations, confessions of minor faults and delinquencies,

or extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest

inquiries. The very children that he loved―his pet pupil,

Paquita―seemed to be conscious of some hidden sin. The

result of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly.

For the first half-year the Commander’s voice and eye were

at variance. He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in

speech. Gradually, however, his voice took upon itself the

hardness of his glance and its skeptical, impassive quality,

and as the year again neared its close it was plain that the

Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to

the Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape

the watchful solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who

were first to ascribe the right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous

origin and the special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now

talked openly of witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel, the

evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo

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Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable

to local authority. But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de

Cortes, had no power over the political executive, and all

attempts at spiritual advice failed signally. He retired baffled

and confused from his first interview with the Commander,

who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction in the fateful

power of his glance. The holy Father contradicted himself,

exposed the fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is

asserted, committed himself to several undoubted heresies.

When the Commander stood up at mass, if the officiating

priest caught that skeptical and searching eye, the service

was inevitably ruined. Even the power of the Holy Church

seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the affections of the

people and the good order of the settlement departed from

San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that

surrounded the white walls of the Presidio grew more and

more to resemble in hue the leathern jacket of the

Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed

his dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with

drought; a blight had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards,

and the rain, long-delayed and ardently prayed for, came not.

The sky was as tearless as the right eye of the Commander.

Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and plotting among

the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more

firmly, tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and

looked up his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander

sitting, at the hour of evening prayers, alone in the

guardroom. He no longer attended the services of the Holy

Church, but crept away at such times to some solitary spot,

where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The firelight

played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed

figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small

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hand touch his arm, and looking down, saw the figure of

Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at his knee. “Ah, littlest of

all,” said the Commander, with something of his old

tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives of his

native speech―“sweet one, what doest thou here? Art thou

not afraid of him whom everyone shuns and fears?”

“No,” said the little Indian, readily, “not in the dark.

I hear your voice―the old voice; I feel your touch―the old

touch; but I see not your eye, Senor Commandante. That

only I fear―and that, O senor, O my father,” said the child,

lifting her little arms towards his―“that I know is not thine

own!”

The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then,

recovering himself, he kissed Paquita gravely on the

forehead and bade her retire. A few hours later, when silence

had fallen upon the Presidio, he sought his own couch and

slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure

crept through the low embrasure of the Commander’s

apartment. Other figures were flitting through the parade

ground, which the Commander might have seen had he not

slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the

couch and listened to the sleeper’s deep-drawn inspiration.

Something glittered in the firelight as the savage lifted his

arm; another moment and the sore perplexities of

Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when

suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of

terror. The Commander slept peacefully, but his right eye,

widely opened, fixed and unaltered, glared coldly on the

would-be assassin. The man fell to the earth in a fit, and the

noise awoke the sleeper.

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To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows

thick and fast upon the mutinous savages who now thronged

the room was the work of a moment. Help opportunely

arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily driven

beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received

a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that

mysterious organ, it was gone. Never again was it found, and

never again, for bale or bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of

the Commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon

San Carlos. The rain returned to invigorate the languid soil,

harmony was restored between priest and soldier, the green

grass presently waved over the sere hillsides, the children

flocked again to the side of their martial preceptor, a TE

DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral

content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San

Carlos. And far southward crept the GENERAL COURT

with its master, Peleg Scudder, trafficking in beads and

peltries with the Indians, and offering glass eyes, wooden

legs, and other Boston notions to the chiefs.

155

Notes by Flood and Field

PART ONE

IN THE FIELD

It was near the close of an October day that I began

to be disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had

been riding since sunrise, and my course through the

depressing monotony of the long level landscape affected me

more like a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,

performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena―a

California sky. The recurring stretches of brown and baked

fields, the gaping fissures in the dusty trail, the hard outline

of the distant hills, and the herds of slowly moving cattle,

seemed like features of some glittering stereoscopic picture

that never changed. Active exercise might have removed this

feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long since

given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged

trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the

Atlantic reader under that title. The sharply defined

boundaries of the wet and dry seasons were prefigured in the

clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry atmosphere the

decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic which

overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too

practical for such thin disguises. She merely turned the

Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old diagnosis of

Death in her sharp, contracted features.

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In the contemplation of such a prospect there was

little to excite any but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds

in the flinty blue heavens, and the setting of the sun was

accompanied with as little ostentation as was consistent with

the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed,

with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened

on the plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to

loom up as I urged my horse forward. A half- hour’s active

spurring brought me to a corral, and a little beyond a house,

so low and broad it seemed at first sight to be half- buried in

the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out of

the soil, like some monstrous vegetable, its dreary

proportions were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There

were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant

and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No

projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to

wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf

containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap. Its

uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as

though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded

existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly

closed against the rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar

element, I walked to the rear of the house, which was

connected with a smaller building by a slight platform. A

grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and met my

salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led

the way to the principal room. As I entered, four young men

who were reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes

of perfect repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity

nor interest. A hound started from a dark corner with a growl,

but was immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity,

and silenced again. I can’t tell why, but I instantly received

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the impression that for a long time the group by the fire had

not uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly

stated my business.

Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account

of the Espiritu Santo Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior

boundaries of township lines, so as to connect with the near

exteriors of private grants. There had been some intervention

to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted

adjacent―“settled land warrants,” interrupted the old man.

“Ah, yes! Land warrants―and then this was Mr. Tryan?”

I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in

connecting other public lines with private surveys as I

looked in his face. It was certainly a hard face, and reminded

me of the singular effect of that mining operation known as

“ground sluicing”; the harder lines of underlying character

were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and soft

outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the

prevailing atmosphere of the valley, as he launched into an

EX PARTE statement of the contest, with a fluency, which,

like the wind without, showed frequent and unrestrained

expression. He told me―what I had already learned―that

the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek,

described in the loose phraseology of the DESENO as

beginning in the VALDA or skirt of the hill, its precise

location long the subject of litigation. I listened and

answered with little interest, for my mind was still distracted

by the wind which swept violently by the house, as well as

by his odd face, which was again reflected in the

resemblance that the silent group by the fire bore toward

him. He was still talking, and the wind was yet blowing,

when my confused attention was aroused by a remark

addressed to the recumbent figures.

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“Now, then, which on ye’ll see the stranger up the

creek to Altascar’s, tomorrow?”

There was a general movement of opposition in the

group, but no decided answer.

“Kin you go, Kerg?”

“Who’s to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?”

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man

turned to another hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a

mangy bearskin on which he was lying, with an expression

as though it were somebody’s hair.

“Well, Tom, wot’s to hinder you from goin’?”

“Mam’s goin’ to Brown’s store at sunup, and I s’pose

I’ve got to pack her and the baby agin.”

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth

exhibited for the filial duty into which he had been evidently

beguiled was one of the finest things I had ever seen.

“Wise?”

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust

a worn and patched boot into the discourse. The old man

flushed quickly.

“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time

you war down the river.”

“Said he wouldn’t without’en order. Said it was like

pulling gum teeth to get the money from you even then.”

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There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old

man’s parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged

wit of the family, sank back in honorable retirement.

“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren’t

pestered with wimmin and children, p’r’aps you’ll go,” said

Tryan, with a nervous twitching, intended for a smile, about

a mouth not remarkably mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said

shortly:

“Got no saddle.”

“Wot’s gone of your saddle?”

“Kerg, there”―indicating his brother with a look

such as Cain might have worn at the sacrifice.

“You lie!” returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing

it around his head and gazing furiously in the hard young

faces which fearlessly met his own. But it was only for a

moment; his arm soon dropped by his side, and a look of

hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take the

chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the

assurance that I required no guide when the irrepressible

Wise again lifted his voice:

“Theer’s George comin’! why don’t ye ask him?

He’ll go and introduce you to Don Fernandy’s darter, too, ef

you ain’t pertickler.”

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently

had some domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural

160

pleasantry), was followed by a light step on the platform, and

the young man entered. Seeing a stranger present, he stopped

and colored, made a shy salute and colored again, and then,

drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped

lightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes

turned frankly on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic

impression he made upon me, and I took it upon myself to

ask his company as guide, and he cheerfully assented. But

some domestic duty called him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no

longer resisting the prevailing influence, I silently watched

the spurting flame, listening to the wind which continually

shook the tenement. Besides the one chair which had

acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently

discovered a crazy table in one corner, with an ink bottle and

pen; the latter in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar

to country taverns and farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles

and double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a dozen

saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the horse

about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the

inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me,

the shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind without,

I found it difficult to believe I had ever known a different

existence. My profession had often led me to wilder scenes,

but rarely among those whose unrestrained habits and easy

unconsciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfortable

I shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts―which

I think occur naturally to people in like situations―that this

was the general rule of humanity and I was a solitary and

somewhat gratuitous exception. It was a relief when a

laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused

a general movement in the family. We walked across the

dark platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its

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entire length was occupied by a table, at the farther end of

which a weak-eyed woman was already taking her repast as

she at the same time gave nourishment to a weak-eyed baby.

As the formalities of introduction had been dispensed with,

and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a

seat without discomposing or interrupting her. Tryan

extemporized a grace, and the attention of the family became

absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the

upper end of the table often betrayed the presence of the

“wellspring of pleasure.” The conversation generally

referred to the labors of the day, and comparing notes as to

the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a

vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast that

when a chance allusion of mine to the business of my visit

brought out the elder Tryan, the interest grew quite exciting.

I remember he inveighed bitterly against the system of

ranch-holding by the “greasers,” as he was pleased to term

the native Californians. As the same ideas have been

sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances

they may be worthy of record.

“Look at ‘em holdin’ the finest grazin’ land that ever

lay outer doors. Whar’s the papers for it? Was it grants?

Mighty fine grants―most of ‘em made arter the ‘Merrikans

got possession. More fools the ‘Merrikans for lettin’ ‘em

hold ‘em. Wat paid for ‘em? ‘Merrikan and blood money.

“Didn’t they oughter have suthin’ out of their native

country? Wot for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of

yaller-skinned diggers, not so sensible as [racial expletive]s

to look arter stock, and they a sittin’ home and smokin’. With

their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and

crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort

things wurent allowed in Mizzoori.”

162

At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily

lifted my eyes, and met the half laughing, half embarrassed

look of George. The act did not escape detection, and I had

at once the satisfaction of seeing that the rest of the family

had formed an offensive alliance against us.

“It was agin Nater, and agin God,” added Tryan.

“God never intended gold in the rocks to be made into

heathen candlesticks and crucifixens. That’s why he sent

‘Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate for

lazy lopers. She never gin six months’ sunshine to be slept

and smoked away.”

How long he continued and with what further

illustration I could not say, for I took an early opportunity to

escape to the sitting- room. I was soon followed by George,

who called me to an open door leading to a smaller room,

and pointed to a bed.

“You’d better sleep there tonight,” he said; “you’ll

be more comfortable, and I’ll call you early.”

I thanked him, and would have asked him several

questions which were then troubling me, but he shyly slipped

to the door and vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had

gone. The “boys” returned, one by one, and shuffled to their

old places. A larger log was thrown on the fire, and the huge

chimney glowed like a furnace, but it did not seem to melt

or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it lit. In half an

hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by day

undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received

its owner’s full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned,

and I missed George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous,

I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall. There was no

163

sound but the rushing of the wind and the snoring of the

sleepers. At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my

hat and opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight

with the wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a

tornado, and the familiar faces of the bright stars above me,

I felt as a blessed relief. I ran not knowing whither, and when

I halted, the square outline of the house was lost in the alder

bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a

vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I

noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently

my progress was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound.

It struck me forcibly as resembling an island in the sea. Its

height gave me a better view of the expanding plain. But

even here I found no rest. The ridiculous interpretation Tryan

had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears, and

echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the star, I sought

the house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon

the platform. The door of the lower building was open, and

the old man was sitting beside the table, thumbing the leaves

of a Bible with a look in his face as though he were hunting

up prophecies against the “Greaser.” I turned to enter, but

my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying beside

the house, on the platform. The broad chest heaving with

healthy slumber, and the open, honest face were familiar. It

was George, who had given up his bed to the stranger among

his people. I was about to wake him, but he lay so peaceful

and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I went to bed with a

pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil figure

soothing me to sleep.

I was awakened the next morning from a sense of

lulled repose and grateful silence by the cheery voice of

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George, who stood beside my bed, ostentatiously twirling a

riata, as if to recall the duties of the day to my sleep-

bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been

magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the

windows. A dash of cold water, with an extra chill on from

the tin basin, helped to brighten me. It was still early, but the

family had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a wagon

winding far in the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom

had already “packed” his relatives away. I felt more

cheerful―there are few troubles Youth cannot distance with

the start of a good night’s rest. After a substantial breakfast,

prepared by George, in a few moments we were mounted

and dashing down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the creek,

now dry and baked with summer’s heat, but which in winter,

George told me, overflowed its banks. I still retain a vivid

impression of that morning’s ride, the far-off mountains, like

silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky, the crisp dry air, and

the expanding track before me, animated often by the well-

knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and

picturesque with flying riata. He rode powerful native roan,

wild-eyed, untiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas!

the curves of beauty were concealed by the cumbrous

MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels all equine

distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit that

can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises

before me, as we again bear down into sunlit space. Can this

be “Chu Chu,” staid and respectable filly of American

pedigree―Chu Chu, forgetful of plank roads and

cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small

white feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust.

“Give her her head; don’t you see she likes it?” and Chu Chu

seems to like it, and whether bitten by native tarantula into

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native barbarism or emulous of the roan, “blood” asserts

itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude of years is

beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek

widens to a deep gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite

side, carrying a moving cloud of impalpable powder with us.

Cattle are scattered over the plain, grazing quietly or banded

together in vast restless herds. George makes a wide,

indefinite sweep with the riata, as if to include them all in his

vaquero’s loop, and says, “Ours!”

“About how many, George?”

“Don’t know.”

“How many?”

“‘Well, p’r’aps three thousand head,” says George,

reflecting. “We don’t know, takes five men to look ‘em up

and keep run.”

“What are they worth?”

“About thirty dollars a head.”

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment

at the laughing George. Perhaps a recollection of the

domestic economy of the Tryan household is expressed in

that look, for George averts his eye and says, apologetically:

“I’ve tried to get the old man to sell and build, but

you know he says it ain’t no use to settle down, just yet. We

must keep movin’. In fact, he built the shanty for that

purpose, lest titles should fall through, and we’d have to get

up and move stakes further down.”

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Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in

a herd we are passing, and with an exclamation he puts his

roan into the center of the mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu

darts after the roan, and in a few moments we are in the midst

of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs. “TORO!” shouts

George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a way

for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and

their spume is cast on Chu Chu’s quivering flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such

shapes as Jove might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such

as peacefully range the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry

Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to meet the

exigencies of a six months’ rainless climate, and accustomed

to wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.

“That’s not our brand,” says George; “they’re strange

stock,” and he points to what my scientific eye recognizes as

the astrological sign of Venus deeply seared in the brown

flanks of the bull he is chasing. But the herd are closing

round us with low mutterings, and George has again recourse

to the authoritative “TORO,” and with swinging riata divides

the “bossy bucklers” on either side. When we are free, and

breathing somewhat more easily, I venture to ask George if

they ever attack anyone.

“Never horsemen―sometimes footmen. Not through

rage, you know, but curiosity. They think a man and his

horse are one, and if they meet a chap afoot, they run him

down and trample him under hoof, in the pursuit of

knowledge. But,” adds George, “here’s the lower bench of

the foothills, and here’s Altascar’s corral, and that White

building you see yonder is the casa.”

A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing

another adobe building, baked with the solar beams of many

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summers. Leaving our horses in the charge of a few peons in

the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the sun, we entered

a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable

coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in

cool water, from its contrast with the external glare and heat.

In the center of a low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with

a black-silk handkerchief tied about his head, the few gray

hairs that escaped from its folds relieving his gamboge-

colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense

added to the cathedral gloom of the building.

As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to

receive us, George advanced with such a heightened color,

and such a blending of tenderness and respect in his manner,

that I was touched to the heart by so much devotion in the

careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by the

effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white

teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor

as we entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of

business which would deprive the old senor of the greater

part of that land we had just ridden over, and I did it with

great embarrassment. But he listened calmly―not a muscle

of his dark face stirring―and the smoke curling placidly

from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had

finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the line of

demarcation. George had meanwhile disappeared, but a

suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and English, in

the corridor, betrayed his vicinity. When he returned again,

a little absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and

most self- possessed of the party, extinguished his black-silk

cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native

Californians affect. A serape thrown over his shoulders

hinted that he was waiting. Horses are always ready saddled

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in Spanish ranchos, and in half an hour from the time of our

arrival we were again “loping” in the staring sunlight.

But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself

were weighed down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely

quiet. To break the silence, and by way of a consolatory

essay, I hinted to him that there might be further intervention

or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned with

a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious “QUE

BUENO?―Your courts are always just.”

The Indian mound of the previous night’s discovery

was a bearing monument of the new line, and there we

halted. We were surprised to find the old man Tryan waiting

us. For the first time during our interview the old Spaniard

seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I was

anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner

boundaries as clearly as my recollection served.

“The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines

from this initial point, and there will be no further trouble, I

believe, gentlemen.”

Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a

few tufts of dried grass in his hands. George and I exchanged

glances. He presently arose from his stooping posture, and

advancing to within a few paces of Joseph Tryan, said, in a

voice broken with passion:

“And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in

possession of my land in the fashion of my country.”

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

“I don’t know your courts, your judges, or your

CORREGIDORES. Take the LLANO!―and take this with

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it. May the drought seize your cattle till their tongues hang

down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it be the

curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have

made it of mine!”

We stepped between the principal actors in this

scene, which only the passion of Altascar made tragical, but

Tryan, with a humility but ill concealing his triumph,

interrupted:

“Let him curse on. He’ll find ‘em coming home to

him sooner than the cattle he has lost through his sloth and

pride. The Lord is on the side of the just, as well as agin all

slanderers and revilers.”

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the

Missourian, yet sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the

extravagant power of his native invective.

“Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!―open not, I

say, your lying, Judas lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the

soul of a coyote!―car- r-r-ramba!”

With his passion reverberating among the

consonants like distant thunder, he laid his hand upon the

mane of his horse as though it had been the gray locks of his

adversary, swung himself into the saddle and galloped away.

George turned to me:

“Will you go back with us tonight?”

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by

the fire, and the roaring wind, and hesitated.

“Well then, goodby.”

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“Goodby, George.”

Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not

ridden far when I turned and looked back. The wind had

risen early that afternoon, and was already sweeping across

the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it, and a

picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my

last indistinct impression of George Tryan.

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PART TWO

IN THE FLOOD

Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo

Rancho, I was again in the valley of the Sacramento. But a

general and terrible visitation had erased the memory of that

event as completely as I supposed it had obliterated the

boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of 1861-

62 was at its height when, obeying some indefinite yearning,

I took my carpetbag and embarked for the inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin

windows of the GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over

the water. The only sound was the pattering rain, and that

had grown monotonous for the past two weeks, and did not

disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they

silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief

to friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed

soberly on the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself,

attracted by curiosity listened eagerly to newer details. But

with that human disposition to seize upon any circumstance

that might give chance event the exaggerated importance of

instinct, I was half- conscious of something more than

curiosity as an impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a

leaden sky greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the

half-submerged levee of Sacramento. Here, however, the

novelty of boats to convey us to the hotels was an appeal that

was irresistible. I resigned myself to a dripping rubber-cased

mariner called “Joe,” and, wrapping myself in a shining

cloak of the like material, about as suggestive of warmth as

court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern

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sheets of his boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part

from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the only

visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable

earth, but we pulled away and entered the city, stemming a

rapid current as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street―once a

cheerful, busy thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent

desolation. The turbid water which seemed to meet the

horizon edge before us flowed at right angles in sluggish

rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on the

local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling

houses on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables

to the current, or by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts

of all kinds were gliding in and out of low- arched doorways.

The water was over the top of the fences surrounding well-

kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and private

dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as

roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as

the visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no

longer echoed to carriage wheel or footfall. The low ripple

of water, the occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry of

boatmen were the few signs of life and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in

my ears, as I lie lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my

gondolier who sings to the music of his oars. It is not quite

as romantic as his brother of the Lido might improvise, but

my Yankee “Giuseppe” has the advantage of earnestness and

energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors of the

past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion,

occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some

California Bianca or Laura had been snatched, half- clothed

and famished. Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and refuses

the proffered fare, for―am I not a citizen of San Francisco,

which was first to respond to the suffering cry of

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Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the

Howard Society? No! Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my

money. Still, if I must spend it, there is the Howard Society,

and the women and children without food and clothes at the

Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the

Hall―a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with the memories of

last year’s opulence and plenty, and here Giuseppe’s fare is

swelled by the stranger’s mite. But here Giuseppe tells me

of the “Relief Boat” which leaves for the flooded district in

the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has taught

me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of

others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succor and

help the afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag,

and does not part from me until I stand on the slippery deck

of “Relief Boat Number 3.”

An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down

upon what was once the channel of a peaceful river. But its

banks are only defined by tossing tufts of willow washed by

the long swell that breaks over a vast inland sea. Stretches of

“tule” land fertilized by its once regular channel and dotted

by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly erased. The

cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted

lines in symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are

buried and chilled in the turbid flood. The roofs of a few

farmhouses are visible, and here and there the smoke curling

from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows an

undaunted life within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on

Indian mounds waiting the fate of their companions whose

carcasses drift by us, or swing in eddies with the wrecks of

barns and outhouses. Wagons are stranded everywhere

where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the moistened

glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the

lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from

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the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing,

coiling, sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into

deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their suggestive quiet and

concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this strange

prospect grows oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in

the company of some of the few half-drowned sufferers we

have already picked up from temporary rafts, I forget the

general aspect of desolation in their individual misery. Later

we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number of

our passengers. From them we learn how inward-bound

vessels report to have struck the well-defined channel of the

Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar. There is a voluntary

contribution taken among the generous travelers for the use

of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty

“Godspeed” on either side. But our signal lights are not far

distant before a familiar sound comes back to us―an

indomitable Yankee cheer―which scatters the gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the

obliterated banks far in the interior. Once or twice black

objects loom up near us―the wrecks of houses floating by.

There is a slight rift in the sky toward the north, and a few

bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we penetrate into

shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our party

into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I

borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical

disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the

boats. We give way northerly. It is quite dark yet, although

the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o’clock, and we were

lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a clump of

cottonwood, and the light of the steamer is a solitary, bright

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star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the “bow

oar”:

“Light ahead.”

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds

a twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again

disappears as if by the shifting position of some black object

apparently drifting close upon us.

“Stern, all; a steamer!”

“Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!” is the reply

of the coxswain. “It’s a house, and a big one too.”

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge

fragment of the darkness. The light comes from a single

candle, which shines through a window as the great shape

swings by. Some recollection is drifting back to me with it

as I listen with beating heart.

“There’s someone in it, by heavens! Give way,

boys―lay her alongside. Handsomely, now! The door’s

fastened; try the window; no! here’s another!”

In another moment we are trampling in the water

which washes the floor to the depth of several inches. It is a

large room, at the farther end of which an old man is sitting

wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and

apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I

spring toward him with an exclamation:

“Joseph Tryan!”

He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay

my hand gently on his shoulder, and say:

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“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children,

where are they? The boys―George! Are they here? are they

safe?”

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine,

and we involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and

quiet glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow

sends the blood curdling through our veins. He bowed his

head over his book again, taking no further notice of us. The

men look at me compassionately, and hold their peace. I

make one more effort:

“Joseph Tryan, don’t you know me? the surveyor

who surveyed your ranch―the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old

man!”

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his

blanket. Presently he repeated to himself “The surveyor who

surveyed your ranch― Espiritu Santo” over and over again,

as though it were a lesson he was trying to fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly

caught me fearfully by the hand and said:

“Hush!”

We were silent.

“Listen!” He puts his arm around my neck and

whispers in my ear, “I’m a MOVING OFF!”

“Moving off?”

“Hush! Don’t speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot’s

that? Don’t you hear?―there! listen!”

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We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click

beneath the floor.

“It’s them wot he sent!―Old Altascar sent. They’ve

been here all night. I heard ‘em first in the creek, when they

came to tell the old man to move farther off. They came

nearer and nearer. They whispered under the door, and I saw

their eyes on the step―their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why don’t

they quit?”

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can

find any further traces of the family, while Tryan resumes

his old attitude. It is so much like the figure I remember on

the breezy night that a superstitious feeling is fast

overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them briefly

what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:

“Why don’t they quit, then? They have the stock―all

gone―gone, gone for the hides and hoofs,” and he groans

bitterly.

“There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot

have drifted far, and perhaps the family are safe by this

time,” says the coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and

carry him to the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his

right hand, though its strengthening grace is blank to his

vacant eye, and he cowers in the stern as we pull slowly to

the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky shows the coming

day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached

the steamer, and I had seen Joseph Tryan comfortably

bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket near the boiler and

presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of the old man

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often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about

George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I

was awakened at about eight o’clock in the morning by the

engineer, who told me one of the old man’s sons had been

picked up and was now on board.

“Is it George Tryan?” I ask quickly.

“Don’t know; but he’s a sweet one, whoever he is,”

adds the engineer, with a smile at some luscious

remembrance. “You’ll find him for’ard.”

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George,

but the irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little

dirtier and rather more dilapidated than I can remember

having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some

rough, dry clothes that have been put out for his disposal. I

cannot help thinking that circumstances have somewhat

exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me at my ease by at

once addressing me:

“These are high old times, ain’t they? I say, what do

you reckon’s become o’ them thar bound’ry moniments you

stuck? Ah!”

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect

of a spasm of admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by

great exertion, he has at last pulled on his feet.

“So you’ve picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean

crazy? He must have been soft to have stuck there instead o’

leavin’ with the old woman. Didn’t know me from Adam;

took me for George!”

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At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness,

Wise was evidently divided between amusement and

chagrin. I took advantage of the contending emotions to ask

about George.

“Don’t know whar he is! If he’d tended stock instead

of running about the prairie, packin’ off wimmin and

children, he might have saved suthin. He lost every hoof and

hide, I’ll bet a cooky! Say you,” to a passing boatman, “when

are you goin’ to give us some grub? I’m hungry ‘nough to

skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I’ll turn butcher when things is

dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller.”

I could not but admire this indomitable energy,

which under softer climatic influences might have borne

such goodly fruit.

“Have you any idea what you’ll do, Wise?” I ask.

“Thar ain’t much to do now,” says the practical

young man. “I’ll have to lay over a spell, I reckon, till things

comes straight. The land ain’t worth much now, and won’t

be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the ole man’ll

drive stakes next.”

“I meant as to your father and George, Wise.”

“Oh, the old man and I’ll go on to ‘Miles’’ whar Tom

packed the old woman and babies last week. George’ll turn

up somewhar atween this and Altascar’s ef he ain’t thar

now.”

I ask how the Altascars have suffered.

“Well, I reckon he ain’t lost much in stock. I

shouldn’t wonder if George helped him drive ‘em up the

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foothills. And his casa’s built too high. Oh, thar ain’t any

water thar, you bet. Ah,” says Wise, with reflective

admiration, “those greasers ain’t the darned fools people

thinks ‘em. I’ll bet thar ain’t one swamped out in all ‘er

Californy.” But the appearance of “grub” cut this rhapsody

short.

“I shall keep on a little farther,” I say, “and try to find

George.”

Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new

light dawned upon him.

“I don’t think you’ll save much. What’s the

percentage―workin’ on shares, eh!”

I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens

his opinion of me, and with a sadder feeling than his

assurance of George’s safety might warrant, I walked away.

From others whom we picked up from time to time

we heard of George’s self-sacrificing devotion, with the

praises of the many he had helped and rescued. But I did not

feel disposed to return until I had seen him, and soon

prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the

foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my

arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last look at

the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite

passive and composed. Then our boat head swung round,

pulled by sturdy and willing hands.

It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had

risen. Our course lay nearly west, and we soon knew by the

strong current that we were in the creek of the Espiritu Santo.

From time to time the wrecks of barns were seen, and we

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passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming

implements.

We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the

“LLANO DE ESPIRITU SANTO.” As the wind whistles by

me, piling the shallower fresh water into mimic waves, I go

back, in fancy, to the long ride of October over that

boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant

hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are

rowing silently, and I find my mind, released from its

tension, growing benumbed and depressed as then. The

water, too, is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of

the creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly over the

thwarts, I detect the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide

to have somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bearing to

the north of the line of alder, making an adverse current,

which, as we sweep to the right to avoid, I recognize. We

pull close alongside and I call to the men to stop.

There was a stake driven near its summit with the

initials, “L. E. S. I.” Tied halfway down was a curiously

worked riata. It was George’s. It had been cut with some

sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of the mound

was deeply dented with horses’ hoofs. The stake was

covered with horsehairs. It was a record, but no clue.

The wind had grown more violent as we still fought

our way forward, resting and rowing by turns, and oftener

“poling” the shallower surface, but the old VALDA, or

bench, is still distant. My recollection of the old survey

enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings

of the creek, and an occasional simple professional

experiment to determine the distance gives my crew the

fullest faith in my ability. Night overtakes us in our impeded

progress. Our condition looks more dangerous than it really

is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still new in this

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mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of

perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way

until about eight o’clock, and ground by the willows. We

have a muddy walk for a few hundred yards before we strike

a dry trail, and simultaneously the white walls of Altascar’s

appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving in the

courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose

characterizes the building.

One of the peons recognized me as I entered the

court, and Altascar met me on the corridor.

I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality

for the men who had dragged wearily with me. He looked at

my hand, which still unconsciously held the broken riata. I

began, wearily, to tell him about George and my fears, but

with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he gravely

laid his hand on my shoulder.

“POCO A POCO, senor―not now. You are tired,

you have hunger, you have cold. Necessary it is you should

have peace.”

He took us into a small room and poured out some

French cognac, which he gave to the men that had

accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves before

the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was

intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps

on the corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard’s

habitual gravity was deeper; we might have been shut out

from the world as well as the whistling storm, behind those

ancient walls with their time-worn inheritor.

Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few

minutes two smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were

placed before us, and my men ate ravenously. I drank the

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coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept down the

instincts of hunger.

I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.

“You have eat?”

I said, “Yes,” to please him.

“BUENO, eat when you can―food and appetite are

not always.”

He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with

which most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it

were an experience rather than a legend, and, taking the riata

from the floor, held it almost tenderly before him.

“It was made by me, senor.”

“I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,” I said. “If

I could find him―”

“He is here.”

“Here! and”―but I could not say “well!” I

understood the gravity of the old man’s face, the hushed

footfalls, the tomblike repose of the building, in an electric

flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the broken riata at

last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor to a

somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in

sconces before the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its

counterpane, pillows, and sheets heavily edged with lace, in

all that splendid luxury which the humblest of these strange

people lavish upon this single item of their household. I

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stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him

once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than

that he had known was here, and his generous heart was

stilled forever.

“He was honest and brave,” said the old man, and

turned away. There was another figure in the room; a heavy

shawl drawn over her graceful outline, and her long black

hair hiding the hands that buried her downcast face. I did not

seem to notice her, and, retiring presently, left the loving and

loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the

shifting shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me how

he had that morning met the horse of George Tryan

swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he found him

lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his

person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording

the creek, and that he had as probably reached the mound

only to die for want of that help he had so freely given to

others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse. These

incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the

great chamber that evening―women and children―most of

them succored through the devoted energies of him who lay

cold and lifeless above.

He was buried in the Indian mound―the single spot

of strange perennial greenness which the poor aborigines had

raised above the dusty plain. A little slab of sandstone with

the initials “G. T.” is his monument, and one of the bearings

of the initial corner of the new survey of the “Espiritu Santo

Rancho.”